t LI BRARY OF CONGRE SS, t 

# # 

| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. J 



ANTHROPOS. 



BY THE 

Rev. W. BREED, D.D. 

*\ / \ 
AUTHOR OF ^ 

"MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS BELIEF," &C. 



"on earth there's nothing great but man." 



PHILADELPHIA: 
PKESBYTEKIAN BOAED OF PUBLICATION, 
No. 821 Chestnut Street. 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 

THE TRUSTEES OP THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
of Pennsylvania. 



STEREOTYPED BY WESTCOTT & THOMSON. 



7 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. ANTHROPOS 5 

II. Man 7 

III. Man to Men 12 

IV. Man tn the Bible IS 

V. Man to Himself 24 

VI. Man as he is, 31 

VII. The Wonderful — The Bodily Frame 33 

VIII. The Wonderful— The Soul 46 

IX. The Wonderful — Body and Soul 54 

X. The Fearful — Mortality 60 

XI. The Fearful — Immortality 63 

XII. The Fearful — Pain 69 

XIII. Man and the Son of God 79 

XIV. Man and the God-Man.. 91 

XV. Man and Heayen 99 

XVI. Man and Religion 108 

3 



ANTHROPOS. 



L 

AXTHEOPOS. 

"While the mute creation downward bend 
Their gaze, and to their earthly mother tend, 
Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes 
Beholds his own hereditary skies." 

The Greek -word antliropos is given us in the 
lexicons as a triple compound, made up first, of an 
adverb that signifies "upward j" then of the frag- 
ment of a verb that means "to turn," and lastly of 
a noun that designates the "human face." The 
whole, combined in one word, points us to man as 
the creature that turns his face toward the skies. 

In this term we may find a reference either to 
that peculiarity of physical structure that makes an 
upward look possible, natural, and easy to man, or 
to a real or supposed yearning in human nature for 
a higher destiny, or to that sense of dependence 
upon a higher power that has so abundantly and 
variously expressed itself in man's religious history, 
teaching him to .look for help from above, or to all 



6 



ANTHKOPOS. 



of these together. And it is not impossible that 
there may lurk within it a hint as to human duty 
to the powers supposed to reign on high. 

However this may be, it is an interesting fact, 
that man is furnished with a singular and beautiful 
combination of joints in the neck, at the top of the 
spinal column — a ball and socket joint, enabling 
him to turn the face from side to side, and a hinge 
joint permitting him at will to throw back the head, 
and gaze into the heavens. Thus he is, in his phys- 
ical structure, an anthropos, a looker toward the 
skies. 



MAN. 



7 



II. 

MAN. 

" What am I ? Whence produced, and for what end ? 
Am I the abandoned orphan of blind chance, 
Dropped by wild atoms in disordered dance ? 
Or from an endless chain of causes wrought, 
And of unthinking substance, born with thought. 
Am I but what I am, mere flesh and blood, 
A branching channel, with a mazy flood V s 

Many have been the definitions given of man, 
^ some sportive and some grave. He has been called 
an unfeathered bird — a food-cooking, fire-using ani- 
mal — the talking animal, the animal that laughs 
and weeps — an animal capable of acquiring knowl- 
edge. Strict materialism defines him a thinking 
organism, an animal whose organs secrete thought. 

But whatever else is true or untrue of man, it is 
certain that he is distinguished from all other ter- 
restrial beings by the power of self-knowledge. 

He possesses self-consciousness. He is intelli- 
gently aware of his own existence, of the thoughts 
arising, and the emotions that play within him, and 
of the motives that impel him to action. 

The eye that sees other objects cannot see itself, 
but man is an eye that can see himself. 



8 



ANTHROPOS. 



"The stars that shine, and the planets that 
Wheel unshaken in the wide universe," 

the winds that whisper in the summer evening, and 
howl in the winter tempest, the ocean now a smooth 
mirror, reflecting back the glory of the skies, and 
now raging under the torment of the storm, and all 
birds, beasts, fishes and insects, all execute the will 
of God, and perform the parts severally assigned 
them in the economy of nature, and help to weave 
the wondrous web of human history, and yet all as 
incapable of truly knowing that they exist, and 
what they are, and what they do, as the loom that 
weaves its ingenious tapestries, or the printing press 
that embalms upon the paper page the thoughts of 
a Homer, Milton or Bacon. But man, among all 
these the only true actor in human affairs, is a self- 
conscious being, and knows not only that he is, but 
to a large extent what he is and what he does. 

Doubtless there lie hidden in the recesses of his 
nature, mysteries too deep to be reached by any 
sounding line as yet in his possession. And his in- 
fluence is more impressive and far-reaching than he 
often suspects, or is able to comprehend. 

Still he is an eye that sees himself — a loom that 
may know to a large extent what he weaves, a print- 
ing press that is conscious of the thoughts that he 
imprints upon the page of his own and the world's 
records. 

The mere animal has its instincts that feebly and 
but feebly typify the mental processes of man, 



MAX. 



9 



though they enable it to achieve results that fill us 
with surprise and admiration. With the nest of the 
bird, the web of the spider, the cell of the bee, the 
architecture and strange economies and wars of the 
ant, we are all more or less familiar. Through the 
operations of this mimic intelligence, we are told 
that "the ox eats two hundred and seventy-six 
herbs, but rejects two hundred and eighteen ; that 
the goat finds four hundred and forty-nine palat- 
able, but feels averse to one hundred and twenty- 
seven ; the sheep three hundred and eighty-seven, 
not touching one hundred and forty-one ; the horse 
two hundred and sixty-two, leaving two hundred and 
twelve untasted. The reindeer lays itself down, 
scrapes away the deep snow with its horn and fore- 
feet, and finds its aliment." 

This animal instinct is a matter of profound in- 
terest, and has given exercise to some of the acutest 
of philosophical minds. Descartes discussed it, and 
Lord Brougham has a charming little volume upon 
it. But whatever may be the general truth respect- 
ing its nature, it is without all doubt as nothing to 
the commanding intellect of man. 

He, too, has his instincts, but they are at the bid- 
ding of his higher powers. Shatter the leg of a 
lion, and he will howl in dismay and despair. 
"But when a cannon ball fell into the room of 
Charles the XII., and he remained calmly in his 
chair — when the Dutch Admiral, in the moment he 
was to take a pinch of snuff, and lost the extended 



10 



ANTHROPOS. 



hand by a shot, took it with the other — and when 
the British cannonier, whose right hand was torn 
off by a ball as he was about to discharge his can- 
non, used the left with the words, " Does the enemy 
think that I have but one hand?" — they showed, 
as President Rauch in his Psychology well remarks, 
" That they by their will were above the necessity 
of yielding to fear, or the influence of pain. 

Man then is an animal, or rather he possesses 
and may use an animal nature, with all its array of 
appetites and instincts, but the possessor of these is 
something vastly higher and nobler than the animal 
nature possessed. 

And one of the grandest of his attributes is the 
power to know himself. He may dissect the body, 
count and study the bones, muscles and sinews that 
make up this strange life-bundle. He may, to a 
large extent, fathom the physiological wonders that 
are hinged together in a marvellous system of har- 
monious action and reaction, in health, disease, 
growth and decay. And he may go down into the 
chambers of his own mind, and there setting him- 
self before himself, he may become at once the ob- 
server and the observed, in its constitution and action. 

It is possible, it is not uncommon, to become so 
engrossed with the remote, as to overlook and neg- 
lect what is nearest. Many a man can tell about 
bees and ants, while yet he knows little or nothing 
about himself. One in gazing at the stars may 
walk off a precipice and perish. 



MAN. 



11 



We propose a brief survey, of some of the strange 
things embosomed in our nature, and to consider 
some of the solemnities, responsibilities and possi- 
bilities involved therein. 



32 



ANTHP.OPOS. 



III. 

MAN TO MEN. 

" Man is one : 
And he hath one great heart. It is thus we feel, 
With a gigantic throb athwart the sea, 
Each other's rights and wrongs ; thus are we nien." 

Many centuries ago, the great Aristotle wrote, 
"Man to man is the most attractive of all objects." 
And it may justify and help to persuade to self-in- 
spection and study, to glance at this truth and some 
of its illustrations. 

Is it not true that man merits and actually occu- 
pies a very high place in human regards ? 

Gather the works upon which man has poured his 
loftiest and most ardent and brilliant thinkings,* and 
see to how large an extent his brother man has en- 
grossed them. The painter who paints, and the 
sculptor who moulds, not for the present hour but 
for human interest during all coming time, take 
care to give man a central place in their creations. 

And the great epics, that pass the fiery ordeal of 
the centuries, take their text, and imbue their com- 
mentaries with gatherings from the same repository. 

Bishop Warburton, in that amazing thesaurus of 
learning, the " Divine Legation/' insists, that hu- 



MAN TO MEN. 



13 



man literature has room but for three true epic 
poems, and assigns the occupancy of this literary- 
realm to that royal triumvirate, Homer, Virgil and 
Milton. The first possessed himself of the province 
of morality, the second that of politics, and the last 
that of religion. " These are the three species of 
the epic poem ; for its largest .sphere is human ac- 
tion, which can only be considered in a moral, po- 
litical and religious view." 

There remains, however, another grand sphere 
of literary labour, which, however, embraces all the 
themes of all these three, and that is History. 
And Herodotus, and Thucydides, and Gibbon and 
Macaulay will still hold their places in human libra- 
ries, side by side with Warburton's grand triumvi- 
rate. And the charm that secures them their im- 
- mortality grows out of man's interest in men. And 
the historic page, whatever other claim it may have 
to human regard, needs no other than the fact that 
it frowns or smiles, weeps or bleeds with the crimes, 
virtues, struggles, darings, victories, defeats, joys 
and woes of our kind ! 

It is these that hallow the scenes where they 
have taken place. 

"What's hallowed ground? 
' A kiss can consecrate the ground 
Where mated heads are mutual bound ; 
The spot where love's first links are wound, 
That never arc riven, 
Is hallowed down to earth's profound, 
And up to heaven." 

2 



14 



ANTHROPOS. 



And if a kiss, much more a tear. And if a tear, 
much more a drop of blood. And what is human 
history but a long tale of tear-shedding and blood- 
shedding ? 

Indeed let a man but once cross your pathway in 
human life — let Irim be thrown together with you 
for but the casual intercourse of a single hour, 
and a greater or less interest is thereby awakened 
in your heart in his behalf. And years after, if 
tidings reach you of that stranger as the sharer in 
some strange good fortune, or the victim of some 
bloody outrage, or the subject of some sore calam- 
ity, that past acquaintance of an hour, now recalled, 
will invest the tidings with a tenfold interest in your 
mind and heart. 

To the traveller in remote and unfrequented re- 
gions, though nature may concentrate about him 
her beauties and sublimities, yet if in the midst of 
all, a man emerge to view, his heart will thrill with 
an intensity of fresh delight. 

Our western plains are diversified with certain 
excavations and upthrowings of earth, which, as 
mere terrestrial elevations and depressions, lack all 
special claim to human regard. Yet in fact they 
have attracted man in solitary pilgrimage and in 
caravans, to inspect and gaze with mysterious awe 
upon them. 

Why now this pre-eminence accorded to them in 
man's regards over many a mass of terrestrial sub- 
limity of God's own workmanshp ? The secret lies 



MAX TO MEN. 



15 



here. Those mysterious mounds bear indisputable 
evidence that minds have thought and hands have 
wrought them — hands and minds of our brethren 
according to the flesh, of whose career and doom, his- 
tory, tradition and song are alike silent as the grave, 
and of whom the only tidings within human reach 
are the enigmatical whisperings of those fast decay- 
ing earthworks. 

The geologist, as he turns over leaf after leaf of 
that rocky volume in which nature has been so long 
writing her autobiography, no matter how deep his 
interest in the fossil remains of vast ungainly mon- 
sters, of fern-prints and fish turned to stone, all is 
forgotten if the foot-prints of a fellow-man come to 
view. 

And yonder landscape, of hill and dale, of winding 
stream with flowery banks, of tall trees and lesser 
shrubs, villages in the distance, and flocks browsing 
in the meadows — is it beautiful ? Does it surpass 
all actual art, and mock conception of improve- 
ment ? Well, if man cannot excell it upon the 
canvass in lines and colours, he still has his 
triumph. He is able to invest even that, or any 
other scene in nature, with a vastly enhanced in- 
terest over the human heart. While engrossed 
with its natural beauties, let some one whisper in 
your ear, 

" In yonder grove, Pocahontas saved the life of 
Smith. Beneath yonder spreading elm, Penn made 
his treaty with the Indians. On yonder plain the 



16 



ANTHEOPOS. 



mailed knights of England extorted from their lack- 
land king the Magna Charta. In yonder house, 
Milton was born— in that one, Shakspeare died. 
Yonder rock received the foot of Tell, as he sprang 
from the grasp of Gesler. Yonder field, where now 
the nodding corn invites the sickle, when the sun 
of Waterloo went down, was 6 covered thick with 
other clay — ' 

" Heaped and pent, 
Rider and horse, friend and foe, in one red burial blent/ " 

Nay, even at Niagara, where that world of waters 
rushes in tumultuous merriment down that awful 
hill, and then, wreathing its brow with rainbows, 
plunges into the wild abyss, well assured that he 
who bids the leap will know where to find every 
precious drop — even there, we say, if pointed to the 
spot whence slipped the maiden, to rescue whom her 
lover sprang and both were swept to death — Niagara 
herself, present with us face to face, vanishes from 
our apprehension ! 

In a word, let physical nature do her utmost ; let 
her exhaust all her treasures of beauty and sublimity 
to throw a spell over the human spirit, and then, 
but let that scene become associated with the doings 
and darings, the triumphs or the woes of man, our 
brother, and the spectator's bosom will heave with 
a tumult of emotions that nothing else could possibly 
evoke. Niagara's voice is drowned to silence in 
that one maiden's shriek. Niagara's glories are 



MAX TO MEX. 



17 



eclipsed to darkness by the woe of that one hapless 
youth ! 

So genuine, so general and intense is the interest, 
that man awakens in the bosom of his brother man ! 
Why. then, should he not seek acquaintance with 
himself? 

2 * 



18 



ANTHROPOS. 



IV. 

MAN IN THE BIBLE. 

" The word of God, as contained in the Scriptures 
of the Old and New Testaments/' is mostly conceived 
of by men as a revelation of which God is the chief 
subject, as well as the author. We are, perhaps, 
too much in the habit of considering it as the all- 
engrossing aim and end of holy writ to remove the 
veil that hides the attributes of the Divine Being, 
and make him better known. 

But it merits attention also, that in so far as God 
is the theme of inspiration, men are the audience 
addressed therein, and that it was in order that his 
glory might shine through men, that the Holy Spirit 
brooded over the sacred penmen, furnishing matter, 
and so controlling the mind as to secure an infallible 
and authoritative record of the Divine will. 

But in truth, the Bible is hardly more an unveil- 
ing of God than it is of man ; and a chief aim, and 
one grand result of inspired teaching, is to make 
man known to himself. 

And, indeed, a theology of any practical value is 
impossible, unless coupled with a sound anthropology. 



MAX IN THE BIBLE. 



19 



Beyond the reach of the rays of revelation, all know 
how wild have been the anthropologies of even the 
sages of the highest civilizations. Thales, the father 
of Greek philosophies, was to himself, in nature, 
origin and destiny, a profound mystery. Nor did 
the oscillations of philosophic speculation, for two 
centuries from his time to Socrates and Plato, 
develope truth for a single sound and reliable pro- 
position upon this subject. And the teachings and 
progress of four centuries more left that noble 
inquirer, Cicero, still in the dark, as to whether 
there dwelt within him a soul that would survive the 
shock of death that laid the body in the grave. No 
one can follow him in his dark gropings after the 
truth among the masses of contradictory opinion 
without a deep commiseration for his perplexities, 
nor read, but with a pang, the touching confession 
he puts into the mouth of one of the interlocutors 
in his discussions of the nature of the soul. 

" I know not how it is, but while I am reading 
Plato, I feel fully assured of the soul's immortality ; 
but when I lay aside his book, all my firmness of 
assurance passes away." 

If this were so with the cultivated and acute 
Greek and Roman mind, we need not wonder at the 
marvellous visions that have haunted the thoughts 
of the imaginative Orientals. 

Brahm wakes from his long slumber and becomes 
Brahma ; and out of Brahm matter issues, and these 
latter united form the universe. This universe con- 



20 



ANTHROPOS. 



tains mind, and the grosser elements, and the union 
of these produces the genii and men. Then comes 
the endless series of transmigrations, the aim of 
which, through aid of religion, is the reabsorption 
of the individual into the great soul. 

Connected with this is that masterpiece of Satan, 
Caste. From Brahma's head come the Brahmins, 
the predestinated masters of mankind. From other 
parts of the god, the other classes issue, down to the 
foot, whence come the poor Indras. These, with 
their thirty or forty subdivisions, constitute a social 
system which forms one of the most formidable 
barriers that true religion is called to surmount. 

Thus, our missionaries can gain no access for the 
truth but by breaching these walls and overthrowing 
to its foundations this monstrous anthropology. 

Hence, the opening page of revelation tells the 
true story of man's origin and nature. A personal 
God creates him in his own image. Matter is 
moulded, with exquisite workmanship, into a most 
beautiful form, and into this form God breathes a 
life, and man becomes a living soul. 

As the opening page of God's book tells how man 
came into being, an early record shows how he fell, 
and furnishes us with the explanation of the physical 
ills and moral perturbations which fill the earth 
with disorder, and cover it with the pall of death. 

Then comes the gradual development of the 
scheme for his redemption and rescue. Altar-fires 
begin to blaze, and altars and sacrifices to be multi- 



MAX IN THE BIBLE. 



21 



plied. Abraham is called. Moses is rescued from 
the Nile and builds the tabernacle. Solomon erects 
the temple. In the fulness of time Christ comes, 
the Lamb of God, to take away the sins of the 
world. Faith lights her torch ; hope holds out her 
star ; and man, by aid of the cross, climbs back to 
heights that Adam in paradise never knew. 

And from beginning to end of the Holy Word, 
man constantly appears as the chief actor in its 
scenes, and the chief object of its provisions. If 
devils come upon the stage, their aim is to ruin man. 
If angelic interventions abound, their object is some- 
times to execute judgments upon, but oftener to 
lend a helping hand to man. "Are they not all 
ministering spirits sent forth to minister for them 
who shall be heirs of salvation ?" 

In these pages, man's character is powerfully, 
terribly delineated ; " deceitful above all things, 
desperately wicked ; abominable, filthy, drinking in 
iniquity, like water." 

His • condition * before God is displayed ; under 
condemnation, by nature, " a child of wrath." His 
duty is declared. Appeals, warnings,, exhortations, 
expostulations, threats, and invitations abound. 

And the volume closes with pictures ; some grand, 
some terrible as imagination ever conceived, of the 
two several abodes into one or other of which man 
passes when hidden from earthly scenes. 

Thus, if this book is all alive with God, it is not 
less alive with man. 



2£ 



ANTHEOPOS. 



The one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm may be 
taken in this respect as a kind of epitome of the 
whole book. There we find these two grand subjects 
of inspired teaching coupled in some of the sublimest 
strains of David's minstrelsy. The psalm opens 
with the two in juxtaposition, man under the burn- 
ing eye of God, "0 Lord, thou hast searched me, 
and known me !" 

In the sentences next following, this general 
truth is reduced to particulars. In every posture 
and position, in all his ways, going and returning, 
rising up and lying down, he is still the object of 
the divine observation. In- this knowledge, the 
movements of the tongue and the exercises of the 
mind are included. 

"My thoughts, before they are my own, 
Are to my God distinctly known; 
He knows the. words I mean to speak, 
Ere from my opening lips they break. 

" Within thy circling power I stand, 
On every side I find thy hand ; 
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad, 
I am surrounded still with God." 

Then follows a brilliant flash of poetic fire, the 
theme of which is the divine Omnipresence. 

" Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence ? If I ascend up into 
heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed in hell, 
behold, thou art there ! If I take the wings of the 
morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea ; 



MAX EN THE BIBLE. 



23 



even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right 
hand shall hold me ! If I say, Surely the darkness 
shall cover me ; even the night shall be light about 
me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee ; but 
the night shineth as the day: The darkness and 
the light are both alike to thee !" 

Then, man becomes again the prominent object 
of thought. 

"I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and won- 
derfully made. My substance was not hid from 
thee when I was curiously wrought in the lowest 
parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my sub- 
stance, yet being unperfect ; and in thy book all my 
numbers were written, which in continuance, were 
fashioned, when as yet there was none of them." 

If, then, the God of heaven has made man a chief 
theme of the only written revelation ever penned, 
well may man make himself the theme of frequent 
and solemn meditation and study. 



24 



ANTHROPOS. 



V. 

MAN TO HIMSELF. 

" The proper study of mankind is man." 

The well-known precept, "Know thyself," is said 
to have been inscribed over the door of Apollo's 
temple, at Delphi. And if subordinate nature, 
animate and inanimate, are worthy of study, surely 
the student himself is not less worthy. 

For man's views of his own nature, correct or 
erroneous, cannot fail to exert important influence 
upon his conduct, and his conduct sows the seed of 
a harvest he will spend an eternity in reaping. 

If one assume with some philosophers that man 
is a mere mass of finely organized matter, a mere 
bundle of flesh and bones, veins and muscles, he 
will also assume that the world is a great larder 
fitted up to gratify human appetite, and that man's 
chief end is to secure the largest possible number 
of pleasurable sensations at the smallest possible 
cost. 

But let him realize the truths as to his nature 
and relationship to his brother man on the one hand, 
and to his Creator on the other; that made in the 



MAN TO HIMSELF. 



25 



image of God, he is immortal, accountable, living, 
thinking and acting under the unclosed eye of him 
who will adjudge him to an eternity in correspond- 
ence with his character and conduct, that death, 
lurking at every corner, will usher him a naked soul 
into the presence of his judge, and the pressure of 
these high truths must give a tone to his spirit, a 
loftiness to his aims, and a force to his better pur- 
poses, that mere materialism cannot conceive. 

There are those who never rise to a higher con- 
ception of life and of the world, than that which 
makes the one a great play-ground, and the other a 
protracted holiday. What man is, they never trouble 
themselves to inquire. If he is more than a twit- 
tering wren, or a swallow, gliding to and fro in 
the summer air ; a gay butterfly, commissioned to 
flit from flower to flower on sunny fields, they never 
make the discovery; and hence they do nothing but 
trifle from one end of life to the other. 

The world cries piteously for aid, but the trifler 
trifles on. Social and political earthquakes unsettle 
established order, prostrate ivy-grown customs, and 
inaugurate new schemes and systems, and he, the 
while, watches with all-engrossing interest the revo- 
lutions of fashion. While others grapple in the 
struggle for the overthrow of some giant wrong, he 
sighs or exults over some momentous change in the 
cut of a vest pattern. 

War breaks out, and patriotic furors surge like a 
deluge through the land, and patriotic hosts, leaving 
3 



26 



ANTHR0P0S. 



all the endearments of home, "mount barbed steeds " 

" To fright the souls of fearful adversaries/' 

and he the while " courts an amorous looking-glass." 

While others seize the musket, he seizes his cane; 
while others buckle on the cartridge-box, he buckles 
on his neck-tie; while others march to battle, he 
marches up and down" the fashionable thoroughfares, 
a gratuitous advertiser of the wares of the man- 
dresser. 

And at length he reaches the end of his life, (for 
varieties as well as values have an end,) and looking 
back through an avenue of forty or fifty years, with 
widows here and orphans there ; here the groping 
tribes of the indigent blind, and there of the deaf 
mute ; here the poor children of lunacy, and there 
the populous hospital- ward, and everywhere the 
poor and ragged and wretched, and whact in the 
name of humanity has he done for them ? 

And now, what has he to show to his conscience, 
to society, and to Grod, for all these years of life's 
gifts, enjoyments, and opportunities ; what but a 
manly account of so much bread consumed, so many 
suits of clothing worn out, perhaps so many horses 
disabled, and carriages defaced, and a respectable 
pyramid of broken champagne bottles and empty 
cigar boxes ? 

And what has he to offer to the grave but a mass 
of dust that had been more profitably expended in 
constructing an ox, a horse, or a faithful dog, and 



MAN TO HIMSELF. 



27 



what to God but a soul that had better never been 
created ! 

One whose name is known to almost every child 
in the land, when approached upon the great subject 
of man's destiny, replied, that he cared not to 
trouble himself now with these matters, for he should 
soon pass to another world, and then he would know 
the whole 'truth without the trouble of inquiring. 
As if the commandant of a national ship, in time of 
war, ordered on a cruise, should spend his time as 
comfortably as he could in his cabin till his provi- 
sions ran out, and then return to ask the govern- 
ment whither, and for what he was sent. It will be 
too late in the life to come first to inquire what one 
ought to do in this. 

But in some instances, at least, the question as 
to man's nature and destiny will not suffer itself to 
be quietly postponed. 

Seated in our study one summer evening, the 
door-bell announced a visitor. He was a youth of 
perhaps nineteen, of uncommon acuteness and un- 
common thoughtfulness of mind. He had come to 
talk about his soul. 

Long and interesting was the conversation that 
ensued. He evidently thought for himself, and 
exhibited an almost morbid disregard for authority. 
He was willing, even anxious to be a Christian, pro- 
vided he could reason his way through, and be able 
to give to himself, and especially to others, a rational 
account of the processes and objects of faith. He 



28 



ANTHROPOS. 



was even afraid that his desire to become a Christian 
would have an undue influence upon his judgment 
and action in the case. 

Some of his views were dreamy and pantheistic 
in their tone. "I sometimes," he said, " fancy 
myself a njere dream, destitute of real existence. 
Mysteries encompass and baffle me. I know not 
which way to turn." 

He, however, avowed that realities he could not 
permanently doubt, and possibilities that he could 
neither affirm nor deny were sometimes the occasion 
of mental disturbance that rose almost to anguish. 

" Here I am," he said. " I am not here for ever. 
Die I must. I may die to-night. What then ? 
Perhaps I shall be annihilated. This I could 
welcome, but perhaps I shall not. I may survive 
death; and if so, I may be miserable; I may be 
happy; but all is involved in doubt." 

" I do not believe that there is a God ; but I do 
not believe that there is not. I have no ground on 
which I can base either proposition. I am all at 
sea without a rudder or a chart. For all I know 
there may be a triune God and an atonement, a 
judgment, a hell and a heaven. I do not know 
that there is a hell, and yet I know that to-morrow 
I may be there." 

" This utter uncertainty makes either happiness 
or rest impossible. I often lie awake at midnight 
and cannot and dare not sleep, lest I be launched 
into the abyss of the unknown." 



MAN TO HIMSELF. 



29 



I anxiously sought for the source of this state of 
mind so unusual in one so young, and I found that, 
like many others, he had in his quest "for a so-called 
rational religion thought it needful to study 6 *the 
other side of the question." He must not, like a 
child, take his faith from the hand of tradition, but 
must construct a creed for himself. Hence, he must 
read what had been written against religion also. 
And he had read ! Eead every infidel book that 
came in his way; and he had so mastered them, that 
he had come into possession, or rather, he had put 
himself into the possession of all the doubts and 
sneers and sarcasms that ribald infidelity had heaped 
up in its literature. These so swarmed in his mind, 
that whenever an argument for the truth rose to his 
thoughts, it was at once cancelled by some ready 
infidel contradiction, or so crippled, that it could 
not make its way to his convictions. Thus, by 
infidel aid, he had disabled his own powers of be- 
lieving the truth. He was like a poor inebriate, so 
chained by his awful habits, that although he at 
times more than suspected that he was destroying 
his own soul, he was helpless for reform. One sight 
of the wine-cup would drown all his better resolu- 
tions, and take captive all his better judgments. 

I asked him to lend me one of his most potent 
authorities. He sent me one. It was Dr. Hobach's 
"System of Nature," with foot-notes by Diderot, a 
rigid and powerfully reasoned system of material- 
ism. He, however, could not see the absurdity of 

3* 



30 



ANTHROPOS. 



Diderot's malignant denunciations of those who held 
opposing creeds ; for if the system of material neces- 
sity were true, his opponents could no more help 
believing and acting as they did, than the Mississippi 
could help flowing, or Niagara falling. Nor could 
he see that the reasoning of his cherished author 
was the most vicious of circles. For according to 
him, all events were a mere series of inevitable 
causes and effects without any first cause. Nature 
was a great mill with shafts, bands and spindle, 
without any motive power to set it agoing. There 
was an adamantine chain of consecutive links, but 
no staple to hang the chain on ! 

How thoroughly that book had been studied, 
however, was manifest from its appearance. And he, 
poor fellow, was more thoroughly entangled in its 
coils than were Laocoon and his sons in those of the 
twin serpent on the shores of Troy. 

In his then state of mind, he made me think of 
the Indian, who, sleeping in his canoe, was imper- 
ceptibly wafted out upon Niagara's current, and 
awakened only by the hissing and howling of the 
waters on the margin of the precipice. There 
seemed nothing left for him but to sing his death- 
song and perish. And from what I have learned 
of that youth since, I tremble to think that this was 
indeed his end ! 

But there are certain things that we may learn 
of our nature by a little reflection, and to some of 
these we propose to point the reader's attention. 



MAX AS HE IS. 



31 



VI. 

MAX AS HE IS. 

" Learn more of reverence, not for rank or wealth — that needs no 
learning ; 

That comes quickly, quick as sin does ! Aye, and often leads 
to sin. 

But for Adam's seed — Max! Trust me; 'tis a clay above your 
scorning, 

With God's image stamped upon it, and God's kindling breath 
within." 

AYe recall the brief pregnant saying, already 
quoted from the word of God, in which the psalmist 
writes : 

" I am fearfully and wonderfully made." 

Perhaps a strictly literal rendering of this passage 
would read — "With terrible things I am made 
wonderful." But either rendering classifies the 
truths respecting our nature under these two general 
heads — the Fearful and the Wonderful. Xow, it is 
true, that the several topics thus suggested overlap 
each other. Most of the fearful elements in our 
nature are wonderful, also, and some of the won- 
derful are fearful. Yet they are sufficiently distinct 
to justify a general division of our theme — man as 
he is — into these two lines of meditation. 



32 



ANTHROPOS. 



Fixing our eye then first on the wonderful, we 
find it branching into three several streams, each 
alluring us to a stroll upon its banks. There is 
first the wonderful, as displayed in our bodily frame ; 
then, the wonderful as seen in our mental or spiritual 
nature; and last,, but by no means least, the won- 
derful as involved in the union subsisting between 
these two. 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 33 



VII. 

THE WOXDERFTJTj — THE BODILY FRAME. 

The most obvious and palpable among the ele 
ments of human nature, is the bodily frame. Man 
is not a body, but he has one. " He is not an 
organism, but an intelligence served by organs. " 
In general and of right, the man is the master of 
the body; but in some respects, and in some cases, 
in a degree no way honourable to him, it is his 
master. It should serve him, but he often serves 
it. He ought to make it an instrument in a useful, 
holy life ; it often makes him the slave of sin. 

It is through the bodily organs that external 
nature reaches the soul, and affects not only his 
comfort, but his disposition and character. No 
doubt more than man knows, he is at the mercy of 
meteorological, electrical, and magnetic vicissitudes. 
Heat and cold determine the forms of especially 
domestic architecture, and to a considerable degree, 
man's social habits, and thus very largely his char- 
acter and disposition. 

"Will any one deny," asks Dr. Draper, in his 
" Intellectual Developement of Europe," "the influ- 



34 



ANTHROPOS. 



ence of rainy days on our industrial habits, and on 
our mental condition, even in a civilized state?" 
" Meteorology to no little extent influences morals ; 
the instinctive tendency to drunkenness is a func- 
tion of the latitude." 

The stolid Esquimaux, the lively Frenchman, and 
the grave Englishman, owe their differences very 
much to the effects of external objects upon human 
nature. 

1. In looking at man, the first thing that strikes 
the eye is his attitude. 

In an assemblage of the lower order of animals, 
one is not long in discovering which of them is of 
the seed royal. The lordly lion carries dominion in 
his very tread ; but introduce man among them, and 
both you and they are struck with his great and 
evident superiority. He stands erect, they are 
prone. He looks to heaven, and they to earth ; and 
in his eye there is fire that awes the boldest of them. 

In this erect position of the body, man is alone 
among the tribes that tread the earth ; all others, 
by nature, bend forward and look downward to the 
dust from which they came, and into which, at death, 
they descend. 

The quadrumana, whose general structure most 
closely approximates that of man, such as the chim- 
panzee and the ourang-outang, of necessity bend 
forward, and their long arms are ever ready to act 
/ the part of legs in their ungainly locomotion. But 
the human arm, made for nobler purposes, hangs by 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 35 



the side, while the framework, with its well-adjusted 
curves, brings the centre of gravity between the 
feet, and makes him, as has been said above, even 
physically an anthropos, a looker toward the skies. 

The erect position in man is at once a distinguish- 
ing fact and an impressive sermon. The earth 
beneath his feet is to him but a stepping-stone to 
something higher, and intimates an upward tend- 
ency — an eagle's flight/ " They that wait upon the 
Lord/' with eyes turned towards his throne, " shall 
mount up with wings as eagles ; they shall run and 
not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint." 

That earth must remain where God placed it, be- 
neath his feet. It may not climb, with its boasted 
treasures, into his affections, dragging him down like 
a wretched muckrake, to dig and scrape in its mire for 
his chief good. And when licentiousness and drunk- 
enness bend his noble form into similitude with that 
of the brutes, he exchanges the nature God gave 
him for a baser, and no longer an anthropos, an 
upward looker, he becomes a burrower among defile- 
ments that unman him, and depravities that debase 
him. 

2. Then the structure of the human frame is full 
of marvels. 

The steam engine is properly considered one of 
the most masterly achievements of human genius. 
How admirable is that combination of strong arms, 
cranks, wheels, pistons, and cylinders. The very 
type of resistless energy, almost of self-acting intel- 



36 



ANTHROPOS. 



ligence ; but compared with man, its maker, what is 
it that thou art mindful of it ? 

There are those more than two hundred bones, 
shielding the brain, protecting the eye, forming a 
sheath for the life-marrow in the spinal column, and 
in the legs supporting the frame, as " pillars of 
marble set upon sockets of fine gold/' the whole 
forming firm framework for the system, made up of 
materials conveyed mysteriously to their places by 
a series of wonder-working organs. 

And how marvellously are these bones combined ; 
some with serrated edges in close suture, as with the 
bones of the skull ; some as the teeth rigidly secure, 
"like pegs driven into aboard;" while others are 
adapted to the free motions required in the exigen- 
cies of life. The ribs projecting forward and down- 
ward, by their evolution in respiration open a cavity 
within large enough to admit from seventy to an 
hundred cubic inches of air. Nor can any mechan- 
ism be more perfect than that displayed in the joints; 
now a hinge where motion in a single plane is re- 
quired, as at the knee, and now the ball adjusted to 
its socket, where a circular motion is needed. In 
all these cases, too, the tips of the bones are supplied 
in their delicateness of structure with connecting 
ligaments and separating pads, and withal a con- 
stant supply of lubricating mucilage, preventing 
friction and rendering action easy and painless. 

We need only to add the durability of this 
machinery of locomotion. "A limb shall swing 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 37 



upon its hinge, or play in its socket many hundred 
times an hour for sixty years together, without 
diminution of its agility." Surely we are wonder- 
fully made ! 

Then, what wonders lie embosomed in that system 
of muscles, more than five hundred in number, that 
wrap this long framework round in a covering of 
flesh with their strange power of contraction and 
relaxation ! Each muscle is a bundle of fibrous 
cords, and we are told that at least ten several con- 
ditions are met in each mass, figure, magnitude, 
fulcrum, point of action, collocation with respect to 
the two ends, place, position of the whole muscle 
and introduction into it of nerves, arteries and veins. 

With reference to the joints, the muscles are so 
adjusted as to work just the effect needed in each 
case, whether motion in a plane or in a circle. 
Sometimes they are located at the point where the 
result is needed ; but when this would be inconve- 
nient, as in the fingers, they are placed at a distance 
and the force conveyed to the proper place by cords 
strong enough for the purpose, and yet not too large 
for convenience. 

The rapidity of their action is another marvel, as 
in speaking or playing upon a musical instrument ; 
and another still, is their amazing complication, a 
hundred of them acting in every breath we draw. 

Attention, too, is often called to their interde- 
pendence, the failure of a single one of the multitude 
plunging the subject into suffering. 

4 



38 



ANTHROPOS. 



We are told of one, who, from the failure of two 
little muscles to act, was long unable to see, except 
as lie lifted his eyelids with his fingers. 

" Our life contains a thousand Springs, 
And dies if one be gone; 
Strange, that a harp of thousand strings 
Should keep in tune so long V 

Another world of wonders is disclosed in the 
nervous system, with its larger masses in the brain 
and spinal column, its curious ganglion knots, and 
its endless ramifications through the frame, playing 
so important a part among the functions of the 
animal life, and with their inexplicable connections 
with the mind. So profuse are their radiations 
from the great centres, and so complicated the 
mazy net-work with which they overspread the 
surface of the body, that the finest needle-point can 
find no room for entrance between them. From 
millions of minute points these fibrous lines, like 
telegraphic wires, dart intelligence to the mind, of 
any painful impression, and back again through 
another minute cord, often lying beside it in the 
same enveloping sheath comes- the mandate of the 
will to meet the exigencies of the case. The finger 
touches a hot surface, and quicker than thought, 
the tidings flashes to the brain, which as quickly 
sends back the mandate for the withdrawal of the 
suffering member from the destructive contact. 

There, too, is the eye, that beautiful window 
through which the soul looks out upon the surround- 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 39 



ing world. Shielded in its bony socket, and with 
its hairy lash-fringe it has little to fear from either 
the blow of violence, or the invading dust. The 
careful eyelid keeps its surface well moistened. 
Beautifully adjusted muscles roll it in any direction 
desired. The opening in front admits and measures 
the needed amount of light, which, passing through 
its various compartments, paints on" the lit tle 5 acutely 
sensitive retina, the elements of a landscape many 
miles in extent, and transmits the needful impres- 
sion to the brain. 

And this delicate little organ, which a ray too 
much of light offends, which a sand-grain tortures, 
which a pin-scratch destroys, how rarely is it injured ! 

As the eye catches the light, the ear takes in 
sound, which startles the spiritual indwelier with 
the cry of alarm, soothes it with melodies and har- 
monies, or instructs it with words of wisdom. 

As the complicated machinery of the factory is 
set in motion by the rush of water or the pressure 
of steam, so the auricular machinery of the human 
head is set in operation by atmospheric undulations, 
and one thing moves, and another trembles, and 
another shakes, and the brain feels, and the mind 
catches the child's cry, the mother's call, the elo- 
quence of Cicero, or the tramp of battle ! 

The outside ear gathers in the undulations of the 
air, and passes them along a little canal, defended 
with its wax-coating and abattis of hairs against 
harmful intruders, till they reach a little drumhead 



40 



ANTHROPOS. 



stretched across the opening, and fastened at its 
edges in a strong bony rim. The drumhead, 
trembling under the touch, shakes a little bone 
behind it. This bone, like a hammer, knocks upon 
another of anvil-shape. A point of this anvil dis- 
turbs a little bony triangle, and this the liquid in a 
little chamber behind it. The trembling of this 
liquid sets up a series of vibrations in a nerve, and 
the mind hears ! 

The most moving sounds that enter through the 
ear are those which come from the human voice. 
The air passes into and out of the lungs through a 
chamber curiously wrought with plates, and cords, 
and valves, variations in the position of which change 
the breathing into sound ; it may be the warblings 
of a J enny Lind ; it may be a cry of pain. By the 
aid of the lip, tongue, and teeth, this sound is 
divided up into articulate speech, into that mystery, 
the spoken word. 

What is such a word ? Is it a material or spiritual 
thing, or neither ? It is a thought on wings, a 
thought riding upon the air, a thought embodied in 
a sound. But whatever it is, or is not, it is some- 
times a thing of immense power. A careless word 
from the lips of a king once brought the powers of 
England and France together in a bloody war. A 
few words from the lips of the present Emperor of 
the French, made the finances of Europe tremble, 
and filled her sky with menacing clouds. A British 
captain, commanding a man-of-war, when he saw 



THE WOXDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 41 

some of his men flinch under the broadside of the 
foe, with fearful imprecations, wished them all in 
perdition ! After the battle, a Christian sailor said 
respectfully : 

" Captain, had your wish been fulfilled, where 
should we all be now ?" - 

The word went to the captain's heart, and he 
became a successful preacher of the gospel. 

"The ships," writes James in his epistle, "are 
turned about with a very small helm, so the tongue 
is a little member, and boasteth great things. The 
tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity, it defileth the 
whole body and setteth on fire the course of nature." 

And what shall we say of the human hand ? In 
it, as has been well said, we have " the consumma- 
tion of all perfection as an instrument." In its 
structure, twenty-nine bones are so adjusted to one 
another with muscles and delicately formed hinges, 
as to allow a marvellous facility and variety of 
action. The fingers when extended are all of 
different length ; but when closed upon the palm, 
their extremities lie all in the same line. Among 
its distinguishing features is the long, strong, and 
variously moving thumb. No small degree of the 
value of the hand depends upon the facility with 
which its tip may be brought into contact with the 
tips of each of the fingers at will. The muscles 
that play in its motions are chiefly located at a 
distance so as not to interfere with its raised actions, 
and the surface is padded so as to keep its mechanism 

4 * 



42 



ANTHROPOS. 



from injury under the strong grasp of the sailor 
when he hangs his whole weight upon them, of the 
woodman when he swings his axe, or of the mechanic 
as he lifts the timber or the heavy stone. 

But its strength is even surpassed in interest by 
the delicacy and velocity of its movements. How 
the fingers fly over the piano keys ! 

Now, it is the possession of such an instrument, 
by such a creature as man, that places him in so 
high lordship over the physical creation. If he 
cannot, like Samson, tear open the jaws of a lion, 
or disengage himself when once in the grasp of the 
tiger, he can frame an instrument that shall send a 
leaden ball to meet the monster, and slay him 
hundreds of feet away. By agency of the hand, 
matter, vegetable and mineral, soft or hard, is made 
to take on the forms decreed for it by mind ; the 
forest-tree is transmuted into beautifully wrought 
and polished furniture; marble, from the quarry, 
takes on the form of man ; the canvass comes to 
palpitate with the scenes of human life, and the 
mountain ores are moulded into swords, or pruning- 
hooks, or into glittering coin. And it is through 
the fingers that human thoughts pass to the custody 
of the deathless page. 

The feet also are among the marvels of the bodily 
frame. 

" There is no part of the human body more won- 
derfully constructed than the human feet. They have 
the requisite strength to support the weight of the 



THE WOXDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME. 43 



human body, and often an additional burden ; flexi- 
bility, that they may be adapted to the inequalities 
of the surface on which we tread, and elasticity to 
assist in walking, running, and springing from the 
ground. This advantage we possess from the num- 
ber of the joints, the arch of the foot being com- 
posed of twenty-six bones. The bones have con- 
siderable play upon each other, and as each articu- 
lating surface is covered with cartilage, the essential 
property of which is elasticity, jarring is thus pre- 
vented." 

Thus, standing is made possible. A problem of 
great complexity is solved, when a mass of the size 
of the human body is enabled to stand firmly on so 
small a basis. A marble statue in human form can 
be pushed over by a child. Sow it is that man 
stands so firmly, and with such ease, by what play 
of the complex machinery of muscles and bones, is a 
mystery not yet explained ; but the effect seems to 
be due to "a faculty of perpetually shifting the 
centre of gravity, by a set of obscure, indeed, but of 
quick-balancing actions, so as to keep the line of 
direction within its prescribed limits." 

There is still another wonder in the human frame 
that has justly excited admiration. Many of its 
activities are at the option of the will. Man walks 
when he will, and talks, or is silent at his own 
volition ; but happily for him his organism is so 
adjusted as to make many of the most important of 
these movements independent of his will. 



44 



ANTHR0P0S. 



Sir Charles Bell, in his admirable book on the 
" Human Hand," writes— 

"If the vital actions of a man's frame were 
directed by his will, they are necessarily so minute 
and complicated, that they would immediately fall 
into confusion. He cannot draw a breath without 
the exercise of sensibilities, as well ordered*as those 
of the eye and the ear. A tracery of nervous cords 
unites many organs in sympathy, of which, if one 
filament were broken, pain and spasm and suffoca- 
tion would ensue. The action of his heart and the 
circulation of his blood, and all the vital functions 
are governed through means, and by laws, which 
are not dependent on his will, and to which the 
powers of his mind are altogether inadequate. For 
had they been under the influence of his will, a 
doubt, a moment's pause of irresolution, a forget- 
fulness of a single action at its appointed time 
would have terminated his existence." 

An act of breathing brings into play a hundred 
muscles, but man breathes as well when asleep as 
when awake ; and if he would, he cannot voluntarily 
cease to breathe. 

The adjustment of the human frame to the planet 
on which he lives is another marvel. The power 
of gravitation draws with a certain force upon the 
bodily frame, a force too great for the frame en- 
feebled by disease to resist. Had our planet been 
twice its actual size, this power would have dragged 
the strongest man to the surface of the earth. 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODILY FRAME 45 



Thus, too, the jaded light-ray coming with its 
inconceivable velocity from stars so distant, that 
thousands of years are spent in the voyage, on 
reaching our planet, finds the eye of man constructed 
to take it in and employ it for the purposes of 
vision. Thus, the strength of the human muscles 
and bones is nicely adjusted to the size of the orb 
on which we dwell, and the little eye-ball fitted 
to the general economy of the universe. 
. Such is a brief glance at the human body with its 
vast assemblage of organs working on, day and night, 
in tireless activity, and playing into each other's 
hands, the very perfection of harmonious adjustment. 

And this china rose which a pebble might dash 
to pieces, this harp of a thousand strings that dies 
if one be gone, continues on through countless 
changes of climate, weather, and temperature, for 
so many years unbroken and unmarred ! In the 
arid desert, and amid Siberian snows, where his dog 
will lie down and die from the fierce frigid or torrid 
extremes, man travels on with impunity. Surely 
we are wonderfully made ! 

Had not the Apostle abundant ground for his 
stirring exhortation, 

" I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, 
that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, 
a-cceptable to God, which is your reasonable ser- 
vice." 



46 



ANTHR0P0S. 



VIII. 

THE WONDEKFUL — THE SOUL. 

" For though, the Giant Ages heave the hill, 
And break the shore and evermore 
Make and break, and work their will; 
Though worlds on worlds, in myriad myriads roll, 
Round us each with different powers, 
And other forms of life than ours, 
What know we greater than the Soul !" 

In turning from the body to the soul, we expect 
to find a wonderful resident in so wonderful a tene- 
ment. In kings' houses we look to find those who 
wear soft clothing. Palaces are not built for g 
paupers, not even by man. When then we find 
the All-wise constructing an edifice of such elaborate 
workmanship, to last but a few years, we may be 
sure that it is for a tenant that Grod delighteth to 
honour. 

It is true that some have affected to doubt the 
existence of an immaterial indweller in the physical 
frame. Reason and science have been suborned to 
testify that man is twin brother to the soulless brute. 
Nor is there a more humiliating fact in the history 
of human thought than that presented in the per- 
verse efforts of the creature made a little lower than 



THE WONDERFUL — THE SOUL. 



47 



the angels to reduce himself to the condition of a 
full-grown monkey. 

"For some philosophers of late, here, 
"Write, men have four legs by nature ; 
And that 'tis custom makes them go 
Erroneously upon but two." 

It has been sharply said, that the only evidence 
of an origin and nature so mean, is the fact, that 
some men have been found to believe it. If, indeed, 
Lord Monboddo, or any one of his followers will 
claim for himself the dignity of a descent from 
some ancient and respectable ape, we may not 
quarrel with the claim, so far as he himself is con- 
cerned ; but he must not drag the human race down 
to that level of degradation. 

If man knows anything, he knows in his own self- 
cojpciousness, that he has an immaterial soul. And, 
if his consciousness deceives him here, it loses all 
claim to credence in any of its dictates. 

" This frame compacted with transcendent skill 
Of moving joints obedient to my will, 
Nursed from the fruitful globe like yonder tree, 
Waxes and wastes — I call it mine, not me. 
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains ; 
The mansion changed, the tenant still remains; 
And from the fleeting stream repaired by food, 
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood." 

The mind or soul is the self. " I turn my atten- 
tion on my being, and find that I have organs, and 
that I have thoughts ; my body is the complement 



48 



ANTHROPOS. 



of my organs. Am I then my body, or any part 
of my body ? This cannot be. The matter of my 
body is in a perpetual process of renewal. I do not 
pass away. I am not renewed." 

" Neither am I identical with my thoughts. They 
are manifold. I one and the same. Each moment 
I am aware of the existence or change of my 
thoughts ; this change is sometimes produced by me, 
sometimes by something different from me ; but I 
always can distinguish myself from them." 

It was in the bestowal of a mind, that the Creator 
stamped his own image upon our nature. A beau- 
tiful proof of this resemblance to God is seen in the 
concord existing between our thoughts and those of 
God. Cicero has said, in effect, perhaps in " The 
Tusculan Questions," "that he who can appreciate 
and approve of the works of God, therein shows tfrat 
his nature is like that of God." Thus, he who can 
peruse and comprehend "Paradise Lost," demon- 
strates that he is a Milton, though perhaps, in many 
respects, of a far humbler grade. It does not 
indeed follow, that a mirror that can perfectly reflect 
a picture, is of the same nature as the painter of 
the picture. But when this mirror is self-conscious, 
and taking in all the elements of a painting, sees in 
it all the painter saw, and appreciates it as thor- 
oughly, he evinces therein the possession of a nature 
like that of the artist. The ox can see a picture, 
but cannot appreciate it. 

So, when man looks at a flower, comprehending 



THE WONDERFUL — THE SOUL. 



49 



its parts, approves the plan of its structure, and 
says to himself: " Had I the power to make such a 
flower, and wished to reach the ends manifestly 
aimed at in its formation, I would have adopted just 
those means of attaining those results," he shows in 
his perceptions and judgments, that his mind acts 
just as does the mind that made that flower. 

The mind, at birth, may be likened to a watch 
that has "run down." It is quiescent, and yet 
with an array of powers that only need the turn of 
the winding key to set all in motion. 

It now begins to perceive, that is, to go out of its 
material enclosure, and learn of the existence and 

character of the outer world. Gradually it lavs 

t/ «/ 

in large stores of knowledge. The bee, too, is 
a little watch, with embosomed powers, that at 
maturity, sends it forth upon a certain round of 
works. What it does, it does well ; but we cannot 
suppose it to know what it is doing, and all its life, 
it can do no more than it does the first day or week. 
But man advances in knowledge and skill, and from 
the wigwam he comes to construct a Coliseum or 
Cathedral ; from the clumsy toy he comes to make 
a telescope, a steamship, a printing-press. 

The bee is perfectly satisfied with the simple 
monotonous round of activities assigned it in the 
economy of nature. It asks not how the ants live, 
nor what the stars are. But man is not, and cannot 
be satisfied with merely knowing that certain things 
are. He is impelled, by a resistless inquisitiveness # 



50 ANTHROPOS. 

of spirit, to penetrate and comprehend the causes 
and modes of their existence. If we show a little 
child, that by burning a bit of paper in a tumbler, 
and then suddenly inverting the tumbler and plung- 
ing it in that position into a basin of water, the 
liquid will rise and partially fill the glass, he will 
instantly ask, " Oh, what makes it?" 

Man finds out that the planets move in elliptical 
orbits, that certain mysterious forces impel them in 
their courses. Cost what it may, he will penetrate 
to the heart of burning Africa, and to the Arctic 
pole. There is always within him a " greedy grasp- 
ing at the distant," and the hidden. He studies 
plants and animals, learns their habits, and classifies 
them into orders and families. Armed with certain 
connate principles or powers of analysis, arrange- 
ment, combination and generalization, he produces 
the whole cyclopaedia of the sciences. 

He possesses also a strange power of self-modifi- 
cation, and, as it were, of reconstruction. He is 
crowned by nature with a potent lordship over him- 
self. The tiger must remain ferocious, and the 
lamb can never make itself other than unresistingly 
tame and gentle. Man, too, is evidently born with 
tendencies to certain courses of action, with a cer- 
tain disposition imbedded in his nature. But it 
does not follow, that his life will prove a mere 
development and cultivation of these connate incli- 
nations. If he find himself the subject of strong 
I animal passions, he is not thereby necessitated to 



THE WONDERFUL — THE SOUL. 



51 



become a mere human brute. There may dwell 
within him a native tendency to miserly penurious- 
ness ; and in spite of this he may rise to the dignity 
of large-hearted liberality. Though, by nature 
irascible and petulant, he may become meek and 
kind and forbearing. 

He soon becomes aware of a principle within him 
that approves or disapproves of certain courses of 
action with himself and others, a principle that 
impels him to these and dissuades from those, a 
power that commends or condemns him in what he 
thinks or does. Certain actions are followed by a 
glow of pleasure, as if the wings of a bright angel 
were waving over him, or by a horror of soul, as if 
dark demons were mocking at and tormenting 
him. 

Scenes equivalent to that fearful one the poet has* 
pictured in Dunsinane have often been realized in 
human experience — when in the middle of the night 
Lady Macbeth walks the room, wringing her hands, 
as if washing them, and exclaiming : 

" Yet, here's a spot ! Out, I say ! One, two ! 
Why, then, 'tis time to do it ! Fye, my lord ! a 
soldier, and afraid ! Yet, who would have thought 
the old man had so much blood in him ? 

" Here's the smell of blood still ! All the per- 
fumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand ! 
Oh! oh! oh!" 

But one of the most impressive facts of the mind, 
is the memory. 



52 



AKTHROPOS 



At a very early period, the mind becomes and 
continues to be a reservoir of ideas, of impressions. 
Countless items of experience pass into and remain 
in its recesses. It is highly probable that the mind 
never parts with an item of knowledge. Thoughts, 
perceptions, imaginations, volitions, emotions, all 
those unnumbered items that make up the active 
life of the. soul, enter and remain in the soul a year, 
five years, for ever ! Some of these contents may 
be summoned back into the consciousness by the 
mandate of the will, more of them rise to view 
through the principle of association, but multitudes 
disappear and may not be recalled for a lifetime. 
Yet they are there ! 

Much light is thrown upon the subject by such 
facts, as the familiar one of the patient in Paris, 
%ho, in a fever-delirium, poured forth a torrent of 
articulate utterances from his lips, utterly unintelli- 
gible to his attendants. At length, a person entered 
who at once perceived that the patient was speaking 
a patois of one of the remoter provinces of the 
realm. When the fever passed off, the sufferer 
could neither speak nor understand the language he 
so fluently uttered in his ravings, showing that in 
the depths of the soul one may carry about w T ith 
him for years the knowledge of a whole language, a 
knowledge beyond the reach of all his present 
powers to recall ! 

Thus., it would seem, man is for ever photograph- 
ing himself upon himself. He thinks, he feels, he 



THE WONDERFUL — THE SOUL. 



53 



loves, he hates, he speaks, he acts, he weeps, he is 
merry, and all these acts and experiences engrave 
themselves in everlasting record upon his deathless 
soul. 

Indeed we are wonderfully made ! 

5 * 



54 



ANTHROPOS. 



IX. 

THE WONDEKFTJL — THE BODY AND SOUL. 

"How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, 
How complicate, how wonderful is man ! 
From different natures marvellously mixt \" 

We have, by no means, fathomed the depths of 
the wonderful in man, till we have encountered the 
marvels involved in the union between the body and 
the mind. 

The fact of such a union in so circumscribed a 
system is full of interest. In the great universe, 
the " macrocosm," we are not surprised at the co- 
existence of mind and matter, for the line of demar- 
cation is so badly drawn — God, the great spirit 
yonder on his throne, and matter his footstool and 
slave. But in this "microcosm," this little universe, 
they are commingled in a mystery of relationships 
whose depths no human sounding-line has ever 
fathomed ! 

In the characteristics in which these elements, 
matter and spirit, severally reveal themselves, they 
are to each other as perfect opposites. Heat and 
cold, sound and silence, fire and water, light and 
darkness, life and death, are not more unlike, and 



THE WONDERED L — THE BODY AND SOUL. 55 

mutually opposed. And it is an amazing triumph 
of divine power and skill, that in human nature they 
are made to embrace each other and work in har- 
monious action for the glory of the Creator. 

That "prince of philosophers/' Sir Wm. Hamil- 
ton, quoting words ascribed to Pascal, says, "Man is 
to himself the mightiest prodigy of nature. For he 
is unable to conceive what body is, still less what is 
mind ; and least of all, how there can be a body 
and a mind. This is the climax of his difficulties ; 
yet this is his peculiar nature." 

But without this union, man is not man. Should 
a- human body be created without a soul, it would 
not be a man. Were a soul created without a body, 
this were not a man. Thus, a material body is to 
the human soul a necessary point of departure from 
non-existence into being. Once set forth a living 
self-conscious thing, it plumes its wings for a flight 
more daring and prolonged than the eagle's ; but it 
cannot begin to fly without a resting-place in a ma- 
terial body at the outset. An essential condition 
of its existence at all as a human soul, is a converse 
for a longer or shorter period with flesh and blood, 
and bones ! 

A second consideration of intense interest is the 
eternity of this marriage relation between matter 
and spirit in man. At death there is a temporary 
divorce of body and soul, but the resurrection 
re-unites them in a union never to be dissolved. 

The mysteries of the separate condition of the 



56 



ANTHROPOS. 



body while bereft of the soul, the dissolution and 
dispersion of its particles, the distance they travel, 
the various alliances they form with other organisms, 
animate and inanimate, their careful preservation, 
and their instant restoration at the sound of the 
resurrection trump and reconstruction upon a new 
and more glorious model, and the re-marriage of 
body and soul to dwell together for ever, are points 
upon which devout meditation may well expend its 
time and strength. It would seem as if the soul 
had set its inviolable seal upon a given portion of 
matter that once palpitated with its life, and made 
them for ever its own. 

Upon such points as these we are not careful to 
answer the suggestions of philosophy. In many 
things we humbly look up to it, but in matters of 
revelation such as these, we look far down upon it. 
Its coffers contain only the guesses of human reason, 
ours divine revealings. Our faith, so far as believers 
are concerned, is expressed in these well-weighed and 
time-honoured words : " The souls of believers are, 
at their death, made perfect in holiness, and do 
immediately pass into glory ; and their bodies, being 
still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the 
resurrection." At the resurrection, " in a moment, 
in the twinkling of an eye, the dead shall be raised, " 
"the corruptible" having "put on incorruption,' , 
the "mortal," "immortality." 

But the marvel, which has most severely taxed 
the powers of thinking minds ever since philosophy 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODY AND SOUL. 57 



lighted her lamp in a dim antiquity, is the manifest 
communion of soul and body in the various phe- 
nomena of mental and physical life. The view 
taken of this matter has given a distinctive character 
to the various philosophies which have, for ages, 
exercised the acumen of the profoundest minds. 

Consciousness, our court of final appeal in such 
matters, our " intellectual bible," makes no more 
imperative demand upon our faith than that in per- 
ception, volition, and action, the mind and body 
somehow come together ; that there is a reciprocal 
action and re-action of the one upon the other, that 
in perception, matter is at once the occasion and 
object of consciousness; that in volition, determining 
bodily action, mind actually moves matter. 

Yet, here lies the difficulty. How can substances 
so heterogeneous as the material and immaterial, 
the extended and unextended, the corporeal and 
incorporeal come into contact, so to speak, at least 
into such co-operation as is reported to us in con- 
sciousness ? 

Upon the assumed impossibility of such commu- 
nion, the materialistic atheist plants himself, and 
there affects to defy the armies of the living God. 

Upon the same ground, Plato denied that God 
could either create or directly control the material 
world. Hence, he interposed a "soul of the world," 
a substance intermediate between God and matter and 
a kind of mediator between them. 

The same difficulty, forbidding any immediate 



58 



ANTHROPOS. 



knowledge of matter, or efficient contact between 
them, has given birth to all the curious theories 
which interpose between the perceiving mind and 
the perceived external world, some substitutionary 
object, material or immaterial, " images more or less 
shadowy coming from the object to the mind, or 
formed by the mind itself, and of itself, in corres- 
pondence with the external, real object/ ' 

To elucidate this mystery, Des Cartes invented 
or adopted, and Malebranche developed the noted 
theory of " occasional causes," which holds, that 
when the material object is presented, God himself 
works the result that we call perception. When 
the mind wills to lift the arm, God, and jnot the 
mind, works the muscular result. 

Leibnitz would solve the mystery by the theory, 
that the mental and material worlds are like two 
separate clocks ; the one furnished with the time- 
keeping, and the other with the striking apparatus ; 
and that such is the harmony divinely pre-established 
between them, that when the hands of the one point 
to the given number, the bell of the other strikes 
off the hour ! When the will would move the foot, 
the foot, of necessity, utterly disconnected with the 
mind, moves as desired, in virtue of this harmony 
pre-established between them ! 

Thus, in the mysteries of this adjustment of mind 
to matter, and matter to mind, in the human system, 
God has baffled the skill of the shrewdest, keenest, 
mightiest minds he ever made ! Plato, Des Cartes, 



THE WONDERFUL — THE BODY AXD SOUL. 59 



Malebranche, Leibnitz, what names in the catalogue 
of human thinkers out-mark these ? And jet, so 
wonderful is this mystery, that they stand gazing at 
it almost like rude savages at an eclipse ! The 
"soul of the world," " occasional causes," " pre- 
established harmony," splendid fictions of splendid 
minds, all leave the mystery still as dark and pro- 
found as they find it i 

Indeed, we are wonderfully made ! 



60 



ANTHROPOS. 



X. 

THE FEARFUL — MORTALITY. 

" Sure 'tis a serious thing to die, my soul ! 
What a strange moment must it be, when near 
Thy journey's end, thou hast the gulf in view ! 
That mortal gulf by mortal ne'er repassed, 
To tell what's doing on the other side ! 
Nature runs back and shudders at the sight, 
And every life-string bleeds at thought of parting \" 

We are ."fearfully," as well as "wonderfully" 
made. As already intimated, some of the elements 
of our nature specified above, are, or may be as full 
of the formidable as they are of the admirable. 
Among these is the memory. 

" The memory of the eternal yesterday 
Which ever waning, ever still returns." 

This rolling up to the surface of the conscious- 
ness of the contents stored up in the mind, is des- 
tined to become in many an everlasting torment. 

There is profound suggestiveness in the incident 
recorded of the great philosopher, who, when ac- 
costed in the. streets by some professor of mnemo- 
techny, with the offer for a certain sum to instruct 
him in his art, replied : 



THE FEARFUL — MORTALITY. 



61 



" I -will give you twice that sum to teach me to 
forget !" 

" Were it not better to forget 
Than but remember and regret?" 

Yes, the impossibility of forgetting, the imperative 
necessity of remembering, will prove to many a ter- 
rible endowment. 

But the most obvious terror in the constitution 
of our nature, is our mortality. 

" Death, death," iterated and re-iterated a dying 
apostate, "is a bitter herb !" 

The marriage tie between the soul and body is 
for eternity, and so intimate is their union, and 
such the nature of their inter-dependence, that the 
hour of their divorce for a time, is a brief, but real 
reign of terror— of the kino; of terrors. 

There is the pain of separation, the depth and 
acuteness of which, whatever may be the specula- 
tions and inferences of physicians, or the experience 
of those who sometimes sink to the gates of death 
and revive, none but those who have actually died 
can know. 

Then, there is the mystery of it. Man may go 
with secure confidence about his own house in mid- 
night darkness ; but set him down in such darkness 
in a house of which he knows nothing, and. his 
movements will be extremely cautious. Man shrinks 
from a plunge into darkness. 

But death passes man into a state to him utterly 
unknown. Even the body seems to shrink back 

6 



62 



ANTHROPOS. 



appalled from the process and state of dissolution 
which is to it so like annihilation. And the soul, 
that as yet has known nothing of unembodied exist- 
ence, that at the very birth of self-consciousness, 
found a material arm to lean upon, and ever since, 
material organs through which to express its life 
and exercise its powers, shudders to set out alone 
upon that untried way. 

And that human being, body and soul, that at 
birth found itself in a mother's arms, that during 
childhood and youth never lacked a brother, sister, 
or playmate, to share its joys or sorrows, that in 
maturer life could always, with one loud call, sum- 
mon kind hearts and hands to its aid, must now 
leave them all, say farewell to earth and sky, and 
friends and home, and go forth all alone upon a 
path he never trod, into a world to him entirely 
new, and without the possibility of return ! 

And withal, there are the dread solemnities that 
overhang this closing up of an earthly career, this 
sealing up of all earthly accounts with the self and 
the Creator ! 

Thus, an inexorable law demands that we shall 
die, and we are so made that we can die, and there- 
fore, we are 66 fearfully " made. 



THE FEARFUL — IMMORTALITY. 



63 



XI. 

THE FEARFUL — IMMORTALITY. 

" 0, listen, man ! 
A voice within us speaks that startling word 
Man, thou shalt never die !" 

Whatever may be said or thought of our mor- 
tality, as a fearful element in our nature, it is as 
nothing to our immortality ! That attribute, that 
constitutes man an imperishable being, is not more 
wonderftfl than it is fearful. 

True, it has long been the proud claim of man 
that, in this respect, he ranks high above the soul- 
less brutes that perish. 

Poets ring their harmonious changes upon this 
theme, and think, without all misgiving, that they 
are crowning man with a chaplet of felicity. 

" Celestial voices 
Hymn it to our souls ; according harps, 
By angel fingers touched, when the mild stars 
Of morning sang together, sound forth still 
The song of our great immortality. " 

Of nothing did Socrates more ardently long to be 
assured than man's immortality. Of this, Plato 
strove long and hard to construct a rational demon- 



64 



AN2£R0P0S. 



stration. The noble Cicero would have given his 
right eye for the removal of all doubt upon this 
point, and in his discussions he puts this sublime 
paradox into the mouth of one of his characters : 

" I had rather be wrong with Plato in affirming, 
than right with Democritus in denying this doctrine !" 

But with all this, is it not, in a merely rational 
point of view, a fearful attribute — this of immor- 
tality ? To be compelled to live for ever ; to be 
doomed to immortality, death, cessation of existence, 
an everlasting impossibility ! 

That man is immortal none can rationally doubt, 
and revelation makes absolutely certain. 

In all ages and nations, the soul, of its own 
instincts, looks to conscious existence beyond the 
grave, and all theologies have busied themselves 
with schemes of a future life. The poet has clothed 
these anticipations in his own fine phraseology : 

'fit must be so, Plato, thou reasonest well, 
Else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality." 

" The soul secure in its own existence, smiles 
At the drawn dagger and defies its point." 

It is certainly, at least powerfully suggestive of 
this truth, that the mind cannot conceive of its own 
annihilation without a manifest self-contradiction. 
Every conception of the mind is of necessity accom- 
panied with the conception also of the existence of 
the conceiving subject. In the conception of a star, 
there is contained, with the idea, or image of the 



THE FEARFUL- 



, IMMORTALITY. 



65 



star, the consciousness of the existence and activity 
of the conceiving mind. Each conception of the 
self, contains a double self, the self as the object 
conceived, and the self as the conceiving subject. 
Now, with the effort to conceive of the self as anni- 
hilated, as non-existent, there of necessity clings to 
the mind all the way through, the conception of the 
self, as yet existing and acting, that is of the con- 
tinued existence of the object it essays to conceive 
of as non-existent ! 

One may entertain the proposition — " I shall 
become non-existent, I may be annihilated." But 
in the result of the effort to conceive of one's own 
non-existence, he finds, from the necessity of the 
case, himself yet existing and conceiving ! In other 
words, the very constitution of our nature makes a 
conception even of one's own non-existence a pal- 
pable self-contradiction and absurdity. 

\\e do not say that this demonstrates our immor- 
tality ; for the principle applies to the past as well 
as to the future ; but we cannot but think that there 
is profound significance in the fact, that when once 
launched into rational existence, we have glided 
beyond the possibility of a rational conception of 
our own nonexistence. 

But this question is for ever set at rest in the 
word of God. All its great doctrines assume man's 
immortality, and its chief exhortations charge him 
to prepare for it. 

Come then, what may, as the ages roll on, what- 

6 * 



66 



ANTHROPOS 



ever s rms may beat, conflagration* consume, catas- 
trophes precipitate terrestrial or celestial things to 
ruin, to you and me, though jaded and foot-sore, 
distressed or tormented, cessation of conscious exist- 
ence is an impossibility ! 

Were there some Lethe whither the soul might 
hasten in the hour of woe, and bathe itself into 
eternal unconsciousness, could we but conceal in the 
folds of the soul's robe some annihilating dagger, or 
poison, wherewith to end existence in the hour of 
need, we might with more courage face the future. 
But this may not be ! 

I am immortal ! I cannot help being immortal ! 
Thou bright sun, when thou hast dismissed thy last 
ray, I shall live to see thy ashes gathered to their 
urn and placed away in the recesses of eternal dark- 
ness ! 

Ye stars, though an existence of millions of mil- 
lions of years be allotted to you, ere I have passed 
the infancy of my existence, I shall see you fall 
and die ! 

And "the hills rock-ribbed and ancient as the 
sun;" the earth, with all its temples, palaces, and 
towers, while yet in the dewy morning of my early 
youth, I shall see them all depart, and like the 
baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind. 

Until then, from some source or other, man can 
obtain assurance that the future state is to be, if not 
painless, at least, tolerable; until some clear and 
reliable information can be obtained as to the con- 



THE FEARITL — IMMORTALITY. 



6? 



dition of man during that endless future, it were 
wiser that he seek to avoid rather than court it. 

It is, indeed, often said, that nothing is so dread- 
ful to the mind as the prospect or possibility of 
annihilation. And no little use is made of this 
assumption by certain errorists, who teach with a 
zeal worthy of a good cause the doctrine that the 
wicked are annihilated at death. 

But what is the truth ? Many times have we 
heard the wish uttered with bitter emphasis, ;< I 
would to God I had never been born !" From the 
lips of even the young and the gay, we have heard 
the wish for annihilation. 

And who is not familiar with the passionate, 
terrible exclamations of the man of Uz in the day 
of his darkness and woe ? 

" Let the day perish wherein I was born, and 
the night in which it was said, here is a man child 
conceived. Let darkness and the shadoAV of death 
stain it ; let a cloud dwell upon it ; V> the blackness 
of the day terrify it. As for th& -ight, let dark- 
ness seize upon it ; let the star,, or the twilight 
thereof be dark ; neither let it see the dawniug :f 
the day : because it shut not up the doors of my 
mother's womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes." 

And he that would not prefer annihilation to 
endless pain and remorse, is a madman ! Who 
would not choose a dreamless sleep before a waking 
agony ? 

And, unless we arc greatly mistaken, it is vastly 



68 



ANTHROPOS. 



more rational to prefer non-existence to the inexor- 
able necessity of being dragged through an eternity 
in which anything is possible and everything un- 
certain. 

"To die — to sleep — 
No more ; and by a sleep to say we end 
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks 
That flesh is heir to — 'tis a consummation 
Devoutly to be wished ! To die — to sleep — 
To sleep Perchance to dream ! Aye, there's the rub ! 
For, in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil 
Must give us pause." 



THE FEARFUL — PAIN. 



69 



XII. 

THE FEARFUL — PAIN. 

All that is fearful in our nature is tremendously 
enhanced by our susceptibility to pain. 

Among the "Jacula Prudentium" of old father 
Herbert, is this: "We cry when we are born, and 
every succeeding day shows why." 

For we hourly grow in our capacity to suffer. 
Man is born a sensitive plant that increases in sen- 
sitiveness while life remains. The man can suffer 
more in an hour than the infant in a week. And 
when the end comes, we often see man tossed on the 
billows of a sea of asjony, and on these billows he 
glides from our view. Aside from revelation, it 
looks as if the future might be a mere continuance 
of this life, that is, an everlasting growth of our 
susceptibility to suffer, coupled with, at the very 
least, a liability every now and then to quiver with 
anguish in every nerve. 

Whether we look at the body, or the mind, we 
cannot hide it from ourselves, that every faculty 
and every organ may become an iwcnue of pain. 

The nerves of sensation, if now they are soothed 
by the balmy breath of spring, may shrink before 



70 



ANTHROPOS. 



the freezing blast of winter. The eye, if now it 
luxuriates in the beauties of the charming landscape, 
and gazes with delight upon the faces that we love, 
may also be called to look upon those same faces 
distorted with agony, or pale in death. Into the 
ear music may roll her rich and melting harmonies, 
and the same ear may be compelled to hear the 
lamentations of sorrow and the wailings of woe. 

But what are all possible bodily distresses to 
those of which the mind is capable? "A wounded 
spirit who can bear ?" 

There are woes that course through the soul like 
streams of burning lava ! There are frames of 
mind to which the brightness of a May morning is 
odious — the singing of birds grating torture, the 
merry laugh like the chattering of fiends ! 

In the afternoon of the 15th of January, 1853, 
six houses, in process of erection in New York city, 
suddenly fell, burying several men beneath their 
ruins. Great was the excitement in that city for a 
time, but it soon gave way to the din of business, 
and passed from the general mind. But one day, 
while surviving workmen were busy restoring the 
wreck, a female figure, in black, was seen hovering, 
like a phantom, about the spot. Her eyes were 
wild, and her manners strange and startling. 
"Who is that?" whispered one workman to an- 
other. " That ^man," the other answered, "is 
the widow of one of the men killed here the other 
day, and she is a maniac !" 



THE FEARFUL — PAIN. 



71 



Now, tell us you who have balances in which to 
weigh human agony, how dreadful and many were 
the convulsive throes, which shook down the walls 
of that mind, and buried that woman's reason in 
ruins heavier far than those that crushed the life 
out of her husband's frame ! 

What a thrill went through our land years ago at 
the tidings wafted to our ears, from across the sea, 
of that widow's son, now a " thin, loose-jointed boy," 
exhuming the rocks from the quarry, now enlighten- 
ing the world upon the fossiliferous treasures of the 
" old red sandstone," and now gathering the " tes- 
timony of the rocks" upon the truth, that all 
knowledge is a grand duet, revelation playing the 
celestial, and nature the terrestrial part ; and now, 
his manly frame quivering in agony, till in delirium 
from an overwrought brain, with his own hand 
quenching the light of his own life ! 

Oh, we are fearfully made ! 

And what a glare of illustration do religious doc- 
trine and religious experience fling upon our capa- 
city to suffer ! For, if man, as a religious being, is 
capable of infinite happiness, as such, he is also 
capable of infinite misery. 

Can any one tell how much distress has been 
endured by men in view of their condition as 
sinners yet under condemnation ? 

The celebrated Dr. -John Owen, we are told, when 
arrested by the Spirit of God, in the midst of his 
■ academic honours, with talents that made him the 



AjSTTHROPOS. 



pride of his university, "was so broken down, that 
for three months he could hardly speak a word to 
any one, and for five years the anguish of his mind 
embittered his life." 

In the journal of the Rev. David Brainard, we 
read such records as this : 

" One night, I remember in particular, I had 
opened to me such a view of my sin, that I feared 
the ground would cleave asunder under my feet and 
become my grave, and send my soul quick into hell 
before I could get home. I scarcely dared to sl$ep, ^ 
for I thought it would be a wonder if I should be 
out of hell in the morning." 

Some years ago, entering a house, I met a lady 
just going out on an errand of social enjoyment. 
After a brief conversation about her soul, I left her, 
and in her hands a "Baxter's Call." 

The next evening, perhaps it was, a ring at my 
door-bell brought me a message from that lady, 
begging me to visit her. On entering her room, I 
found her reclining upon a sofa, in such an agony, 
as I have rarely seen in a human being. She filled 
the room and the house with her cries of distress. 
She was sure that her soul was for ever lost. " Oh," 
she cried, " tell me of Christ. Tell me how I may be 
saved! Pray for my poor soul!" For days and 
nights she continued in a frame "of mind bordering 
on despair, and we all feared *that the reason would 
give way under the terrible pressure, and her mind 
be plunged into ruins ! 



THE FEARFUL — PAIN. 



73 



Sitting once by an aged and godly man, I listened 
while he recited the story of his conversion to God. 
He said : 

""When a young man, I was exceedingly profane 
and wicked. I married, however, a young woman 
of known, and high-toned piety. On the evening 
of the first clay after we entered our little home, as * 
the twilight was gathering, my wife, without saying 
a word, set out a little stand by my side with a 
Bible upon it, and then took a seat on the opposite 
side of the hearth. I, of course, saw at a glance, 
what this meant, i^nd there was such a look of 
confident expectation upon her face, that under a 
kind of fascination I opened the sacred book, read 
a chapter, and kneeling down offered a prayer. 
While thus engaged, such a feeling of horror came 
over me at the thought of what I, a wretched blas- 
phemer, was doing, as no one ever suffered. I said 
nothing of this to her, but inwardly avowed that 
this should be the last time I would be caught in 
such a service ! 

The night passed in awful mental distress, and 
the following day brought no alleviation. In the 
providence of God, the next evening caught me 
entrapped in precisely the same way ! .And when 
I saw my pious young wife sitting before me and 
calmly waiting, I had not the power to refuse. 
Yielding oiice, made it impossible to refuse now. I 
repeated the service, and an increasing horror dark- 
ened my soul. It continued through the night, and 
7 



74 



ANTHROPOS. 



so increased on the following day that I resolved on 
suicide ! .1 knew there was a rope hanging from 
the limb of an apple tree in the orchard, and as the 
evening drew on, and the moment for worship 
approached, I started from our back door for the 
orchard! As -X went, my anguish increased. I 
lost, to some extent, the command of my reason. I 
missed the tree and the rope, and found myself 
running in the woods. I ran until I fell to the 
earth and rolled on the ground in agony ! While I 
lay there, it seemed to me for a time, that I was in 
hell ! Suddenly, hovfever, no doubt, in answer to 
the prayers of others, the light broke ; I saw my 
Saviour in all his beauty and forgiving love, and 
rose from the ground the happiest sinner that was 
ever saved ; and from that hour to this, I have 
never known a doubt !" 

As the old man told this story with his two hands 
folded over the top of his staff, his tears rained down 
upon the floor, and Ijfelt that I was near the gate 
of heaven. 

But sometimes a settled despair gathers over the 
soul in view of its condition as immortal, and yet 
for ever lost, the Holy Spirit for ever grieved, the 
harvest for ever past, leaving it to curse the day of 
birth, and to wish for annihilation ! 

In such a case, one sees and feels that he is in 
the " iron cage." 

" So, the interpreter had him into a very dark 
room, where there sat a man in an iron cage. Now, 



THE FEARFUL — PAIX. 75 

the man to look upon seemed very sad. He sat 
with his eves looking down on the ground, and his 
hands folded together. Then, said Christian to the 
man, 

"T\ T hat art thou?" 

"I am a man of despair, and am shut up in it, as 
in this iron cage. I cannot get out. Oh, now I 
cannot ! I have crucified the Lord afresh, and done 
despite unto the Spirit of grace !" 

"But canst thou not now repent and turn?" 

" God hath denied me repentance. His word 
gives me no encouragement to believe. Yea, him- 
self hath shut me up in this iron cage. Oh, eter- 
nity, eternity ! how shall I grapple with the ills I 
must meet with in eternity?" 

That this is no fancy sketch, many ministers of 
the gospel can testify from their own observation, 
and the word of God makes certain. 

The door may be shut on the soul for ever even 
in this life. The voice may go forth of a soul, " Let 
him alone ; he is joined to his idols ;" a voice heard 
by the ministering angels, and by all the means of 
grace. 

"For, if we sin wilfully after that we have re- 
ceived the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth 
no more sacrifice for sin, but a certain fearful look- 
ing for of judgment and fiery indignation, that shall 
devour the adversaries." 

For long, this exclusion from the kingdom of 
heaven may be unknown and unsuspected by the 



76 ANTHROPGS. 

doomed one. In the meantime, the soul may be as 
merry as. the day is long, as happy as if the name 
were seen written in the Lamb's book of life. But 
the conviction of the awful truth may flash upon the 
mind at any moment. It may come in the midst 
of life. It may not come until the hour of death ; 
but when it comes the spectator may see and know 
what anguish is ! 

A pastor informed me of the following, that came 
under his observation : A young man was arrested 
by the death-summons in the midst of a life of 
profligacy. As the last hour drew near, he was 
seized with an awful horror about the future. He 
would one while pour out oaths and imprecations, 
then, fixing his eye upon his mother, .he would 
spring from his bed, and throwing his arms around 
her neck, beg her to save him ! But whenever she 
proposed to send for a clergyman, he would again 
break out and rave in blasphemies. 

Such torments may men experience in view of 
their sins and the dreaded penalties. 

But even yet, the whole story is not told ! Be- 
neath all these depths there lie other deeps still 
opening wide and threatening to devour — -dense 
darkness, to which all this is but the mere penumbra ! 

There are yet to be considered, the horrors of the 
"second death," the death that lives for ever ! 

It is very remarkable, that nearly all the theolo- 
gies constructed by man contain a future endless 
punishment. The enlightened heathenisms of an- 



THE FEARFUL — PAIX. 77 

tiquity embraced not only an Elysium, but a Tar- 
tarus ; a dismal prison surrounded by a triple wall 
of brass, whose entrance was hidden by a cloud 
three times more gloomy than the darkest night. 
Around this wall rolled the fiery river Phlegethon. 
Its gates of adamant even the gods could not 
open ! 

Such is the hell invented by men for themselves ! 
' And the words of Jesus say, " These shall go away 
into everlasting punishment.' ' It is "the blackness 
of darkness for ever." There the "worm dieth 
not, and the fire is not quenched." 

If now, men can suffer as they do this side the 
grave, what beyond ? 

Surely; we are fearfully made ! All made capable 
of drinking to the dregs all this varied and concen- 
trated bitterness ! 

How, then, is it that men can live as we see them 
living ? That the birds spend their days so joyously, 
leaping from branch to branch, siaging their songs, 
is no marvel ; for, though they, too, are wonder- 
fully, they are not fearfully made. But amazement 
may well possess us when we see human beings 
living as thoughtlessly as they, singing and dancing, 
filling the air with their sounds of mirth and revelry, 
uttering the high oath and the terrible blasphemy ! 

Do they not know that they are human beings ; 
that as such, they are susceptible to every form of 
anguish that ever comes to man ? Within the bosom 
of every unpardoned soul there slumbers a magazine 
7* 



78 



ANTHROPOS. 



of anguish which any day a word of God may 
explode ! 

Well may every human being often and deeply 
meditate upon the fearful elements embedded in his 
nature ! 



MAST AND THE SON OF GOD. 



79 



XIII. 

MAX ANT) THE SON OF GOD. 

We have been meditating upon the wonders 
embosomed in the nature of which we find ourselves 
partakers. 

Another, second to none, for depth of interest 
and wide-reaching consequences, is found in the 
alliance of which this nature has been proved capa- 
ble by the event, with the divine nature. 

From all eternity, "before the mountains were 
brought forth," God existed in himself, by himself, 
himself the whole universe of being, the uncaused 
cause of all, uncreated, self-existent. 

A chief characteristic of this Divine One is his 
unity. " Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one 
Lord." The marks of this unity are seen in the 
all-prevailing harmonies of the created universe, 
certifying it as the offspring of one mind. 

But this unity of God is not of such a character 
as to exclude all diversity. Man also is a unity in 
variety, a material nature, and a spiritual nature 
blended in the harmony of a single person. And 
the boundless affluence of being in the divine nature 
embosoms a tri-personality. In the formula of bap- 



80 



ANTHROPOS. 



tism the names of the three persons appear, and in 
the apostolic benediction, we bless in the name of 
"the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost." 

Now, among the decrees on the eternal page, was 
one fore-ordaining a marvellous and everlasting 
union, between the loftiest nature in the universe, 
and the lowest of known created intelligences, 
between the divine nature in the person of the 
eternal Son of God and human nature. 

The execution of this decree was celebrated above 
eighteen hundred years ago, when the angels hover- 
ing over Bethlehem, shook floods of radiance from 
their wings and filled the air with their congratula- 
tory songs. 

Our world is full of wonders, but the incarnation 
far outrivals them all. In the little acorn in our 
hand, we hold not only the cradled oak, but the 
pregnant germ of countless generations of oak- 
forests ! Bound up in that little bundle are powers 
which, if the proper conditions be furnished, will 
produce a tree ; that tree will, in the course of its 
life, give birth to myriads of like acorns, each of 
which repeat the process, and so on, to the end of 
time. No thoughtful mind but is staggered at the 
mysteries wrapped up in that one little seed. 

But on that little bundle of life wrapped in swad- 
ling clothes in the Bethlehem manger, angels gaze 
with amazement, and in its presence, man may well 
stand with unsandalled feet, and with bowed head, 



MAX AND THE SON OF # GO». 81 

exclaim : " Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. 
It is high, I cannot attain unto it." 

In studying this mystery, we are to bear in mind ? 
that in the incarnation, it was a nature, not a person, 
that was assumed into union with the Son of God. 
The alliance was formed, not between a divine 
person and a human person previously existing, else, 
as Dr. Shedd remarks in his admirable discussion 
of tins subject in his " History of Christian Doc- 
trine," the result would have been a twofold-self, or 
rather, two several selves, while in truth, Jesus 
Christ, the God-Man, was but a single personal self, 
embosoming two natures ; one human, one divine. 

The union was effected by the voluntary assump- 
tion on the part of the eternal Son of God into 
alliance with himself of a human, nature in the 
earliest stages of its existence, before it had become 
an individual person. The human nature of Christ 
never knew aught of existence separate from him. 
It was interwoven with himself and constituted into 
a being in connection with him, moulded by his 
power, shaped by his will, and conformed to the 
great eternal design. 

" Forasmuch as the children are partakers of 
flesh and blood," a human nature, "he also himself, 
likewise," already a person, " took part of the same." 
(Heb. ii. 14.) "He took not on him," took not 
hold of " the nature of angels ; but took on him the 
seed of Abraham." It was the seed, the nature in 
its original elements, that he, by his power, blended 



82 



% ANTHKOPOS. 



with his own nature in one divine-human, human- 
divine personality. 

In this procedure, of course, the Son of God acts 
in pure sovereignty, as he forms a union not with 
an individual human person with a will of its own, 
but with an elementary human nature not yet 
become a person. 

The immediate result of this assumption is the 
person thereby constituted. In this strangely con- 
stituted person, there exists two complete unmuti- 
lated natures, a perfect human nature, and a perfect 
divine nature, as in an ordinary human person we 
find an animal nature blended with a mental nature. 
In this union, neither nature parts with any attri- 
bute properly belonging to it, in itself considered. 

"The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord 
Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God 
became man, by taking to himself a true body and 
a reasonable soul." " The Word was made flesh." 
In this new person the basis and all-controlling 
element is the second person of the blessed trinity. 

' This predominant nature is not merely like, but 
actually is God. 

Adam was like God. He was made in his image. 
He was like him in being perfectly holy ; like him 
in his moral perceptions. Two chords of a musical 
instrument were never attuned to harmony so com- 
plete as that with which the moral nature of man 
originally responded to that of his Creator. 

He was like him in dominion over the lower 



MAX AXD THE SOX OF GOD. 



83 



creation. God divided terrestrial creatures into 
two classes ; the lordly and the subject races. In 
one he placed man, and beneath him the fish of the 
sea, and the fowl of the air, and every living thing 
that moveth upon the earth. All these man might 
catch and kill, buy and sell, and yoke to his uses. 

He was like God in his immortality, and from 
the moment of his creation, his duration runs par- 
allel with that of God. 

Neither is the Redeemer a mere human being, 
inhabited as it were by a divine power. 

Such were the Prophets and Apostles as inspired 
men. " The Spirit of God spake by me," wrote 
David, " his word was in my tongue. • " Holy men 
of Gcd spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 

The Spirit of God dwells in all believers. "Know 
ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the 
Spirit of God dwelleth in you." 

Men of genius are in an important sense the sub- 
jects of divine influence. 

"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying: See, 
I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, and 
I have filled him with the Spirit of God, in wisdom, 
and in understanding, and in knowledge, and in all 
manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works, to 
work in gold, and in silver, and in brass." 

David blesses God, who taught his "hands to 
war and his fingers to fight." 

Hence, the appropriateness of the sublime apos- 
trophe of Milton in the opening of Paradise Lost, 



84 



ANTHROPOS. 



assuming that there was in the poet's breast a tone 
of true devoutness. 

" 0, Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for thou knowest. 

What in me is dark, 
Illume ! what is low, raise and support ; 
That to the height of this great argument 
I may assert eternal providence, 
And justify the ways of God to man." 

The higher nature in the Redeemer was purely 
and properly and perfectly divine, " very God of 
very God." " The Word was God." 

" When he bringeth in the first-begotten into the 
world, he saith, And let all the angels of God 
worship him. Unto the Son, he saith, Thy throne, 
God, ;s for ever and ever." 

" We are in him that is true, even in his Son 
Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." 

The second and inferior element in the person of 
the Redeemer, is truly, purely, perfectly human. 

His body was a true human body, not a seeming 
body, a phantom body, assumed temporarily for a 
purpose, to be put off at death. " Behold!" said 
Jesus, after the resurrection, " behold my hands 
and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; 
for a spirit hath not flesh and blood, as ye see me 
have." 

His tears were true human tears.- His blood was 
true human blood. 

But this human nature was more than a mere 



■ 

MAN AND THE SON OF GOD. 



85 



body, a mere mass of animated flesh. This alone 
were no human nature. A mere body, in whatever 
form, without a soul, is not a human, but a merely 
animal nature. But Christ took to himself " a true 
body and a reasonable soul," a soul replete with ail 
the attributes and endowments of a complete human 
spirit. Hence, he was subject to all the common 
emotions, sympathies and susceptibilities of our 
nature. 

He loved his country, and in the tears that rolled 
down his cheeks, as he wept over doomed J erusalem, 
patriotism had a share. He was a true philanthro- 
pist, and his bosom burned with love for his adopted 
race. Friendship kept her altar-fires kindled in his 
heart, and he "loved Martha and her sister, and 
Lazarus," and he " loved his disciples to the end." 
" Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which 
is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and 
mother." Nor were pure domestic affections want- 
ing. He loved his mother, and tender thoughts of 
her moved within him, even on the cross. 

Now, both these natures, the human and divine, 
were blended in one person. All the experiences 
of the Messiah were those of this complex, but 
single person. 

Had there been two selves, then, as has been well 
said, as only the human nature can suffer, Christ's 
sufferings would have been inadequate to the work 
of the atonement. The penal sorrows he endured 
must possess an infinite value, which to those of a 

8 



86 



ANTHROPOS. 



merely human self were utterly impossible. As it 
was, his agonies, though strictly borne in the hum- 
bler nature, received a value from its alliance with 
the higher, such as to render them infinitely precious 
and effective. As the suffering, not of a merely 
human self, but of a self divinely human, humanly 
divine, they avail to pay all human debts, satisfy 
divine justice, and reconcile us to God. 

In this complex person, the divine nature was in 
constant and commanding control, blending the 
human with itself, sanctifying and glorifying all its 
powers and susceptibilities. 

We are thus enabled to understand and explain 
many of those otherwise startling paradoxes of in- 
spiration. For in the sacred writings, whatever 
may be affirmed of either nature, is affirmed of the 
person. 

As with man, when one says: "I thirst," it is 
the man, the person that thirsts, although the appe- 
tite has its root in the physical nature. And when 
the poet writes— 

" Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumours of oppression and deceit 
May never reach me more V s 

it is the man, the person that longs, though the 
longing comes up from the depths of a noble moral 
and intellectual nature. 

And when Jesus says, " I and my Father are 
one," this is true of Jesus, the Messiah of the corn- 



MAX AND THE SOX OF GOD. 



87 



plex, theantkropic person, but tke affirmation is 
based strictly upon tke divine element in tkat 
person. 

And when ke says, "My Fatker is greater tkan 
I," this, also, is true of tke person ; but this affirma- 
tion is grounded strictly upon tke lower constituent 
nature in tkat person. 

"Before Abraham was, I am." " Tke Son of man 
who is in heaven/ 1 and suck like passages, are true 
of tke speaker, and yet refer us directly to tke 
divine element. " Tkey crucified tke Lord of glory." 
" Tke church which he hath purchased with kis own 
blood." These passages also are true of tke person, 
but point us strictly to tkat nature in tkat person 
wkick alone is capable of suffering. 

" Tkey shall call kis name Emmanuel, wkick be- 
ing interpreted is, God with us." 

Sometimes a banner is put into tke soldier's 
hands inscribed with tke name of battles ke lias 
fought and won, and how fondly he gazes upon its 
folds as they rise and fall on the breeze, and what 
nerve tke sigkt of it imparts when another battle 
draws on ! 

But tkis banner passed from tke angels to Jesus' 
hand, in behalf of the race, betokening tke alliance 
between God and man in our nature. Who can tell 
the whole power and felicity of its influences upon 
mankind?- Governments have been moulded by it. 
Legislation has acknowledged its influence, and all 
literature has experienced its power ! 



ANTHROPOS. 



No other regiment in all the host of God can 
carry such a banner. It waves over the towers of 
no other city in all the empire of Jehovah ! 

Now, do we not find in the fact, that our nature 
is adapted to such a union with the divine, a chief 
one among the wonders that challenge our admira- 
tion ? There are many creature-natures with which 
we cannot conceive such a union to be formed. 
Had the angelic nature been chosen so far as we 
are able to understand that nature, such a union 
would have been far less strange and surprising than 
the alliance with ours. 

And does not this union disclose to us a new and 
profound significancy in the declaration that man is 
made in the image of God ? 

The decrees of God are one eternal purpose. 
The perfections of the divine nature forbid the con- 
ception of any succession in those decrees. His 
plans are in no sense a construction implying any 
after-thought and addition. In our mode of con- 
ceiving of them, we are constrained by the nature 
of our minds to recognize a certain logical order in 
them. But in the divine mind they are all, as it 
were, one complete picture. 

Ruskin, in his "Modern Painters," contrasts the 
mental processes of an ordinary artist with that of 
a first-class genius. The one constructs his picture 
and puts his conceptions together piecemeal. The 
other conceives a given work at once as a whole. 
One constructs, the other creates. One conceives, 



i 



MAX AXD THE SOX OF GOD. 



89 



say, the trunk of a tree, then fits on its branches 
and twigs and foliage, changing and readjusting 
until the object is shaped to his judgment. The 
oilier sees the whole tree at a glance, in all the per- 
fections of its outline and proportions, and thence 
has nothing to do but to embody the conception in 
lines and colours on the canvass. 

Rising from the finite to the infinite, from man to 
God, we must conceive of the Divine Being, as 
having from all eternity before his mind, so to 
speak, a perfect picture of the predestinated universe 
in all its completeness. In his book all its members 
were written, which in continuance, were fashioned 
when as yet there were none of them. Actual 
creation has added nothing, can never add anything 
to this preconceived creation. Every atom of mat- 
ter, with all the successive forms through which it 
was destined to pass, from the beginning to the end 
of time, every sentient creature, with all the events 
in the history of each, what each should be, do, and 
suffer, were all there in that original^lan. 

Hence, we may say, the universe as truly existed 
for God before, as after the actual forth-putting of 
creative power. It is not so with the artist. His 
statue on the pedestal is more a real substantive 
thing than it was while it lay in ideal in his mind. 
But with God, the thing decreed is as instinct with 
reality before, as after its creation. The execution 
of the purpose embodying the eternal thought gives 
that object no new substantial being with God. 
8 • 



90 



ANTHROPOS. 



Now, since the parts of the universe are all ad 
justed to one another in perfect harmony in the 
decree, we must assume that the marvellous nature 
ordained for man, with all that makes it wonderful 
and fearful, had original reference to the relation- 
ship it was to bear to the divine nature in the person 
of the eternal Son, not only here on earth, but in 
heaven above. There for ever, the heavenly host 
are to behold their king, " a Lamb, as it had been 
slain." The sceptre, at whose uplifting they bow, 
is in the hand of Him "who liveth and was dead, 
and who is alive for evermore." In the blessed 
economy of heaven, the Son sits on the throne in 
the glorified body carried with him thither, at the 
ascension from Olivet's crest. Thus, the heavenly 
host see for ever in their king an incarnate God, 
our nature in eternal alliance with the Deity, "God 
and man in two distinct natures, and one person for 
ever." 

In the image of this eternal king, in the form 
which the etejpal Son of God was for ever to wear 
upon the throne he won by his condescension, his 
birth, life and death, (" wherefore God hath highly 
exalted him, and given him a name which is above 
every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, 
&c") man was made, and therefore, again he was 
"wonderfully made." 



MAX AXD THE GOD-MAX. 



91 



XIV. 

MAX AXD THE GOD-MAX. 

Another chapter of wonders awaits our perusal 
in the mysteries and glories involved in the union 
subsisting between Christ, the God-man. and each 
soul on whom his atoning blood has been sprinkled. 

First, we find man, in himself, an inexplicable 
mystery, combining in his person a blending of a 
material, and a spiritual nature. Then, we find 
this marvellous nature taken into alliance with the 
Son of God in the mysteries of the incarnation. 
The climax of all is reached in an additional union 
between the ransomed soul and the ransoming Re- 
deemer. 

For "we are members of his body, and -of his 
flesh, and of his bones. This is a great mystery, 
but I speak concerning Christ and the church." 

"I am the vine, ye are the branches." "Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.' 1 

The body participates in this union. " The body 
is for the Lord." "Know ye not tl^it your bodies 
are members of Christ." 



92 



ANTHROPOS. 



On this passage (1 Cor. vi. 15,) Dr. Charles 
Hodge remarks : " Our bodies are the members of 
Christ, because they belong to him, being included 
in the redemption effected by his blood, and also, 
because they are so united to him as to be partakers 
of his life. It is one of' the prominent doctrines of 
the Bible that the union between Christ and his 
people includes a community of life, and it is clearly 
taught that this life pertains to the body as well as 
to the soul." 

Nor does death, which temporarily divorces the 
soul and body, interrupt or suspend this membership 
with Christ. And it is this relationship that secures 
a glorious resurrection. ".If the Spirit of him that 
raised- up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that 
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in 
you." " Our bodies being still united to Christ, do 
rest in their graves till the resurrection." 

Death is called a sleep, and saints are said to 
"sleep in Christ;" but this is true only of their 
bodies. The soul does not fall asleep ; for it, " to 
be absent from the body, is to be present with the 
Lord." But, if the body participates in this strange 
union, it is because it is drawn in thither by the 
soul, and the channel through which the soul glides 
into this relationship, is faith. The vine clings to the 
supporting tree by its tendrils ; the tendrils of the 
soul are the forth-puttings of faith. 

By nature, the vine, w r eak and helpless, crawls 



MJlN AND THE* GOD-MAX. 



93 



along upon the ground. At length, it reaches a 
tree and begins to climb. One tendril after another 
clasps a twig here, and a twig there, and at length, 
the naturally grovelling becomes a towering vine, 
and SAvings in the air at the tree's very top. So, 
by nature, the soul crawls and grovels, and hugs 
the ground. But when it reaches the Son of God, 
the tree of life, and puts out its tendrils, it mounts 
and mounts, and embracing the tree all around, so 
becomes one with it, that the axe that smites the 
one, smites the other, and no tornado, not strong 
enough to uproot the tree, can dislodge the vine 
from its resting-place. Jfe 

Thus, faith is the connecting link between the 
believer and the Redeemer. A stone forms part 
of an edifice by position. A foreigner becomes one 
with a nation. by naturalization. Man is joined in 
happy relationship with his neighbour by friendship. 
By marriage, a more intimate and profound rela- 
tionship is constituted, and " they twain become one 
flesh." 

Xow, between Christ and man, faith is a marriage 
tie. Christ is the bridegroom. The soul is the 
bride. The Christian pastor is the friend of both, 
who, standing by, greatly rejoiceth at the bride- 
groom's voice. The bridal party is composed partly 
of the membership of Christ's body, the believing 
saints, and partly of the angels, who fill heaven 
with their gratulatory songs when this union is once 
effected. 



94 



ANTHROPOS. 



The moment the marriage vows are uttered, man 
and woman are one flesh. The moment man exer- 
cises saving faith, he and Christ are one. The act 
of faith is an act of transfer, by which one leaps the 
chasm of unbelief and is clasped in the arms of the 
Saviour, in a grasp never to be relaxed, for ever 
and ever. 

But we must go one step farther back to find the 
origin of this alliance. 

The vine clasps the tree through the agency of its 
tendrils ; but whence come the tendrils ? These 
come from the inresident life of the plant that 
eltrudes them from its own bosom. They issue 
from the depths of its vitality. 

But in man by nature, as a religious being, there 
is no life. " In Adam, all die/' The vine is dead. 
Hence, it can neither move towards the tree, nor 
push out tendrils to grasp it. 

Whence comes the life ? The source of this is 
the eternal Spirit of God. "Born," brought into 
life, " not of flesh, nor of the will of the flesh, nor 
of the will of man, but of God." "Born of the 
Spirit." It is "by one Spirit that we are baptized 
into one body." The agent in this work is the 
Holy Spirit, " convincing us of our sin and misery, 
enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, 
and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable 
us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered to us in the 
gospel." The tree is Jesus Christ. The gospel 
plants that tree in human soil within reach of the 



MAN AND THE GO^-MAN. 



95 



human soul. Then, the Spirit, by a creative, re- 
generating act, implants a life which becomes the 
basis of a new series of activities. Interweaving 
with itself the native contents of the soul, the 
understanding, the will, and the affections, it sets 
them upon a new course of action. New percep- 
tions arise, new thoughts, new motives, new emo- 
tions, new purposes. By virtue of these new powers, 
the vine leaves the ground, and grasps and climbs 
the tree. 

Or, recurring to the marriage scene, it is the 
Holy Spirit of God that stands as the officiating 
priest, marrying the soul and the Saviour into a 
union, whose felicities are as great as its mysteries 
are profound. 

These mysteries are as baffling (but. no more so) 
as those of the union between the material and im- 
material in human nature, as those of the human 
and divine natures in the Messiah, as those of the 
trinity. 

The felicities of this union are of greater magni- 
tude and preciousness than we ever shall know till 
we have left 

" This bank and shoal of time," 

and found ourselves upon the bank of life's river in 
the skies. 

A common life now pervades the God-man and 
the redeemed man. As the plant-life takes hold of 
ancWntcnveavcs with itself the life of the engraft ed 



96 



♦ ANTHROPOS. 



twig, so the Christ-life takes hold of and entwines 
with itself the life in the soul. Whatever befals 
the one includes the other. When the persecutor ; , 
smites a saint, he smites Christ. " Saul ? Saul, why 
persecutest thou me /" "In all their afflictions he is 
afflicted." Many are the afflictions of the righteous, 
but in* all of them they are only "filling up that 
which is behind of the afflictions of Christ." 

And they die in Christ. " I am crucified with 
Christ." They bear the penalties of the law in 
Christ, and with him. They live in and with Christ. 
" Because I live, ye shall live also." They rise 
with Christ. His resurrection involves and necessi- 
tates theirs. They ascend with him to heaven, and 
there reign with him for ever and ever. 

A beautiful and precious result of this union is 
seen in the closeness of the bonds thus established 
among the brotherhood of the faithful. 

The question of external union among the various 
tribes of believing Israel, is ever recurring. All 
wish for it. All pray for it. The sacred petition 
of Jesus is ever on their lips. " That they may all 
be one ; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, 
that they also may be one in us. I in them, and 
thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." 

Nor are these yearnings a mere freak of vain- 
dreaming enthusiasm. They grow out of the actual, 
constitutional union, now subsisting between the 
great vine and the branches. They are the yearn- 
ings of different members of a divided family fft* the 



MAX AND THE GOD-MAX. 



97 



removal of all causes of division, and a complete 
and visible family union. 

For already they are actually " one in Christ." 
In him " there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
neither bond nor free." 

Go out under the unclouded sky of night and 
look up at the stars. They seem to lie in unar- 
ranged confusion, as if the Creator had sown them 
broad-cast over the heavens, as the farmer sows 
seed in a field. Each one seems to trim its silver 
lamp and hold up its burning censer before God in 
entire isolation from its bright-robed companions. 
But the truth is, that a cord strong as the will of 
God, holds every primary in its place, and binds the 
secondaries to their several centres. 

And send the ribald scoffer through the world, 
and he will doubtless find abundant diversity, not 
to say disorder among the members of the household 
of faith. Here, a band of Christians will be found 
worshipping after one mode, there after another. 
With this denomination, special, and even inordinate 
stress is laid upon one doctrine or ordinance, and 
with that . upon another. Nay, at times he will find 
those who acknowledge each other as Christians in 
the true sense of the word, arrayed against each 
other, as foe against foe, here exulting in contro- 
versial triumph, there chagrined with a sense of 
discomfiture. One lives in the luxurious ostenta- 
tion of a prince, another amidst the privations of 
extreme poverty, in the bonds of slavery, or even 

9 



98 



ANTHROPOS. 



begging upon the king's highway. One fills the 
professor's chair in the academy, and another, 
doubting that the earth is round, and that it revolves 
upon its axes, knows only that he has a soul, is a 
lost sinner, and that Christ died to save. One 
wears the black skin of the African, another the red 
skin of the American Indian, and another the fair 
skin of the Caucasian. 

But, differing and alienated, and even hostile, 
they are still all one in Christ. " We being many, 
are one body in Christ, and every one members one 
of another. For as many of you as have been bap- 
tized into Christ, have put on Christ." 

And why may we not hope that this vital, consti- 
tutional union, expressing itself in these yearnings 
for a union that is external and visible, shall be one 
day fully realized ? The church is one. The truth 
is one. And when this one church, freed from divid- 
ing imperfections, comes to see this one truth just 
as it is, what will remain as a ground-work and cause 
of division? 



MAN AND HEAVEN. 



99 



XV. 

MAN AND HEAVEN. 

"Who are these in bright array, — 

This innumerable throng, — 
Round the altar night and day, 

Tuning their triumphant song ? 
Worthy is the Lamb once slain, 

Blessing, honour, glory, power, 
Wisdom, riches to obtain ; 

New dominion every hour." 

In the marvellous constitution of our nature, 
fitting it for union with the eternal Son in the in- 
carnation, and with the God man by faith in regen- 
eration, we see a manifest pre-aclaptation for the 
honours and glories assured in the word of God, to 
all who, washed and made white in the blood of the 
Lamb, find their way into the mansions of bliss. 

Few accessible objects have eluded the prying 
inquisitiveness of the human mind; but, as yet, no 
instance has been discovered of a living creature not 
manifestly so adapted to surrounding circumstances 
as to fit it for enjoyment. 

Even the much-talked-of sloth is found to be no 
exception to this law. The apparently dispropor- 
tionate length of its arms, as compared with its legs, 



100 



AMTIIROPOS. 



being nearly twice their length, the structure of its 
feet and claws, curved inwards to such a degree as 
to compel it, when attempting progression on a 
plane surface, slowly and painfully to drag itself* 
along on its elbows, suggested the idea that it was, 
as it were, a kmd of creative mistake, doomed to a 
precarious and wretched life. But when it is found 
to be an arboreal quadruped, born, living, and dying 
in the trees, whose proper mode of progression is 
along the branches and twigs, hanging beneath and 
passing one foot over the other in an easy, and by 
no means tardy, progress, it becomes another proof 
and illustration of divine wisdom and goodness. 

It is little likely, therefore, that man, the wonder- 
fully-framed monarch of all, should be an exception 
to this beneficent law. He desires happiness, and 
was evidently made for enjoyment. 

Sin, in making him miserable, plunged him into 
an abnormal condition. Christ came to cancel sin, 
and thus removing the cause of all sorrow to restore 
man to his normal happy condition. 

This restoration, however, is not complete in this 
life. Cares still burden, suspense harrasses, appre- 
hensions vex, disappointment weighs him down, 
sickness wears him out, and then his spirit is con- 
veyed to another and a better world. 

In that better world, all sources of discomfort 
disappear, and everything around ministers to his 
bliss. Poetry and inspiration combine to picture 
the scenes of enjoyment above, and yet confessedly 



MAN AND HEAVEN. 



101 



fail, partly through the feebleness of language to 
express, and the incapacity of finite minds to con- 
ceive of the actual condition there, to do more than 
produce the impression that those joys are boundless. 

In the last chaj)ters of Revelation, the original 
paradise is not only reproduced, but all its glories 
are infinitely magnified. The first paradise is a 
garden, and so is the last. But in this last, there 
is no forbidden tree. Besides this, the felicities of 
the first are enhanced by the addition of all that is 
fascinating and improving in social life, and in the 
richest results of a perfect civilization. The glories 
of splendid city are added to those of a perfect 
garden. Heaven is represented as a garden in a 
city. The city is spacious, — fifteen hundred miles 
square. The wall is of jasper, its foundations gar- 
nished with all manner of precious stones, and its 
twelve gates are so many pearls. The streets are 
paved, and lined with edifices of pure, transparent 
gold. 

The height of the city is also fifteen hundred 
miles. In this, perhaps, we may find allusion to 
those great and splendid cities of antiquity with 
which John was familiar, most of which contained 
towering eminences crowned with edifices, upon 
which art had lavished all its gifts and wealth all 
its treasures. Over the streets of Ephcsus, the 
temple-crowned heights of Prion and Corcssus threw 
their long shadows. Upon Athens, the Acropolis 
looked down the central base, as the rhetoricians 
9 * 



102 



ANTHEOPOS. 



said, of a vast fire-circled shield, the outer four of 
the circles being the city, Attica, Greece, and the 
world — the Acropolis itself " one vast composition 
of architecture and sculpture, dedicated to the 
national glory and the worship of the Gods," 

Corinth had her renowned Acrocorinthus, tower- 
ing abruptly upward, two thousand feet above the 
city. Its lofty summit, from which the Acropolis 
of Athens, forty-five miles away, was distinctly 
visible, afforded room for a whole town. 

The heaven of the man of Patmos had its temple- 
crowned Acropolis fifteen hundred miles high ! On 
its top was the throne of God, from out of which 
flowed the river of water of life, clear as crystal," 
now gliding through a plain, now leaping in cas- 
cades, now lingering on the terraces, and now thun- 
dering down in magnificent rapids ! On either side 
was the tree of life, bearing twelve manner of fruits, 
each yielding its fruit every month. 

All this, of course, is only the affluence of ori- 
ental imagery, struggling through the holy impulses 
of inspiration, to tell us that the glories of heaven 
cannot be told ! It conveys permission to the 
sanctified fancy to plume its wings for its loftiest 
possible flights in the effort to compass some concep- 
tion of what awaits the glorified. 

But the crowning glory of even this heaven is 
found in the rank assigned to ransomed mortals in 
this world of glories. It were enough that man 
were admitted within the gates of this city-paradise, 



MAN AXD HE A VEX. 



103 



and we can comprehend the raptures of the saintly 
Rutherford, when he wrote, " Though I never enter 
those pearly gates, I shall be content if I may but 
from outside the walls be permitted to throw my 
praises over into the lap of my Lord !" 

But the saints are not kept outside the walls. 
They do not even occupy the mansions on the lower 
terraces of the city. Their home is in the Acropolis ! 
They compose the very court of heaven ! The 
angels are farther from the throne than they ! 

The "new song" in heaven, that awakens its 
highest raptures, is one the angels cannot sing, but 
to which they only respond with their joyous, cordial 
amen ! They can never say " Unto Him that loved 
us and washed us from our sins in his own blood." 

The Son of God has never come into such rela- 
tions with the angels, nor done for them as he has 
for man. He never lifted a burden from an angel's 
soul, nor wiped a tear from an angel's cheek. He 
never saw an angel mother bending over a coffin that 
contained the remains of a precious babe, nor an 
angel widow faint on the edge of the grave in which 
lay the remains of her dearest friend and sworn pro- 
tector. But all who from earth join the throng around 
the throne, go up thither out of great tribulation. 

" And one of the elders answered, saying unto 
me, what are these which are arrayed in white robes, 
and whence came they ? And I said unto him, Sir, 
thou knowest. And he said unto me, These are 
they which came out of great tribulation" 



104 



ANTHROPOS. 



" Once they were mourning here below, 
And wet their couch with tears ; 
They wrestled hard, as we do now, 
With sins and doubts and fears." 

No angel in heaven is indebted to Christ for the 
pardon of a sin, and hence, they are not bound to 
him by the ties of love gushing from hearts grateful 
for rescue from an awful perdition. 

"Jesus said: Simon, I have somewhat, to say 
unto thee. There was a certain creditor which had 
two debtors : the one owed five hundred pence, and 
the other fifty. And he frankly forgave them both. 
Tell me therefore, which of them will love him 
most ? 

" Simon answered, and said, I suppose that he to 
whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, 
Thou hast rightly judged." 

But all who ascend from earth to dwell at God's 
right handj have received forgiveness of countless 
transgressions, and each will sing for ever — 

" Love I much, I'm much forgiven, 
I'm a miracle of grace." 

Of the two sons in the parable, he who loved his 
father most tenderly was the returned prodigal. 
And we may be sure that there is no such love for 
the Son of God in heaven, as that which glows in 
hearts that have been snatched, as brands plucked 
out of the burning, from everlasting woe, and 
gathered to eternal joy through the sprinkling of 
atoning blood. 



MAN AND HEAVEN. 



105 



But the fountain of all the wealth of felicity, there 
poured into human coffers, is found in that strange 
alliance which makes each ransomed one a member 
" of his body and flesh and bones." No such alliance 
has been formed with the angels. " He" took not 
on him the nature of angels." 

" Not angels round the throne 
Of majesty above, 
Are half so nmch obliged as we, 
To our Immanuel's love." 

" They never sunk so low ; 

They are not raised so high; 
They never knew such depths of woe, 
Such heights of majesty." 

""The Saviour did not join 
Their nature to his own; 
For them he shed no blood divine, 
Nor breathed a single groan." 

Hence, even on earth, the angels are the servants 
of the ransomed. "Are they not all ministering 
spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be 
heirs of salvation ?" They take a profound interest 
in all that concerns them. 

" He bids his angels pitch their tents 
Round where his children dwell; 
What ills their heavenly care prevents, 
No earthly tongue can tell." 

They rejoice over their conversion. " There is 
joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner 
that repenteth." At death, the angels bear the 
soul to Abraham's bosom. 



106 



ANTHROPOS. 



A ad in the rapt visions of John, in Patmos, we 
always see the saints nearer to, and the angels 
farther removed from, the throne. 

"And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne, 
and of the four living ones, and in the midst of the 
elders, stood a Lamb, as it had been slain." 

And when the Lamb " had taken the book, the 
four living ones, and the four-and-twenty elders fell 
down before the Lamb." Who these elders and 
living ones represent, we learn in their song. 

" Thou art worthy to take the book and to open 
the seals thereof: for thou wast slain and hast 
redeemed us to God by thy blood." 

And then the angels round about the throne, and 
the living ones, and the elders, thus redeemed, sing 
their responsive song. 

" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive 
power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and 
honour, and glory, and blessing." 

In accordance with this idea of special nearness 
of the saints to God in heaven, is. the proclama- 
tion. 

" Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and 
he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, 
and God himself shall be with them." 

The reason given of this special nearness, is the 
mark of his purifying blood on their white garments. 

They have washed their robes and made them 
white in the blood of the Lamb. " Therefore, are 
they before the throne of God/ and serve him day 



MAX AXD HEAVEN. 



107 



and night in his temple : and he that sitteth on the 
throne shall dwell among them." 

" Know ye not," writes Paul, "that we shall 
judge angels?" that in the arrangements of the 
final economy, the angels will hold a position inferior 
to that of the blood-ransomed, blood-washed saints 
of the Lamb. 

Well may the believer exclaim, in view of such 
prospects, of all that is involved in the glories and 
felicities of such a nearness to the throne of heaven, 
and for the mysteries" of such a relationship to its 
once crucified occupant — " Oh, the depth of the 
riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! 
How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways 
past finding out." 

" Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is 
high, I cannot attain unto it !" 



108 



ANTHR0P0S. 



XVI. 

MAN AND RELIGION. 

In the light of the truths now discussed, and, 
especially in view of the. wonderful, fearful nature - 
we bear, the adaptedness of true religion to our 
condition stands forth in bold* relief. It glorifies all 
that is wonderful, and furnishes also the alchemy by 
which all that is fearful is transmuted into the 
brightest jewels in the human casket. 

Who can parry, or reply to the charge of the infinite 
folly of squandering the affluence of such a nature 
upon the sensual and evanescent, and the sin and 
shame of sacrificing it on the altar of profligacy, 
and thus, not only robbing it of all the glories prof- 
fered in the mystic alliance with the God-man, and 
the exaltation and bliss of an eternal heaven, and 
God of a lamp that else might shine for ever with 
others around his throne, but, also taking security * 
for everlasting woe ! 

Cleopatra, at the banquet given to Anthony, at 
Tarsus, (afterwards the birthplace of Saul,) is said, 
to have dissolved a pearl, worth fifty thousand 
pounds sterling, in vinegar, and swallowed it at a 
draught ! That pearl " might have been sold for 
much, and given to the 'poor." 



MAX AXD RELIGION. 



109 



But, what is even the insane extravagance of that 
profligate queen, when compared with his, who dis- 
solves, as it were, the pearl of such a nature as ours, 
in the cup of three-score years and ten, of easy, 
wild, worldly voluptuousness ? 

Belshazzar perpetrated an act of fatal folly, when 
he lighted up a heathen banquet with the golden 
candlestick, from the Holy Place, in the temple of 
Jehovah. And what do they, who, at the ordinary 
feast of secular life, burn out all the fires of a human 
nature ? 

We blush, and weep together, when we see, as we 
so often do, talents, intellectual, and other, that 
might adorn our literature, might certify and purify 
legislation, multiply hospitals, asylums, and institu- 
tions of learning, making education more efficient 
and more generally accessible, make two blades of 
grass to grow in the place now filled by one, build 
comfortable tenements for the worthy, toiling poor, 
in a word, do many of the ten thousand things that 
go to replenish the cup of national prosperity and 
social happiness, thrown away in unmeaning and 
unmanly trifling ! 

But, what is even this, in comparison with the 
course of him, who, in the endowments of a human 
nature, possessing the means of glorifying God, of 
serving heaven for himself, and of leading many 
others thither, lavishes all upon pursuits and pleas- 
ures, which, at length, leave the exhausted spirit 

to the lamentation of the expiring Talleyrand, 
10 



110 



ANTHROPOS. 



" Behold ! eighty-three years passed away ! What 
cares ! What agitations ! What anxieties ! What 
complications ! What ill-will ! And all without 
other result than great fatigue of body and mind, a 
profound sentiment of discouragement for the future, 
and of disgust for the pa&t !" 

And, if angels ever shudder, they do it at the 
sight of the man who takes his marvellously, fear- 
fully framed body, with its mysterious, immortal 
tenant, and lays it a living sacrifice to be burned to 
ashes on the altar of drunkenness and debauchery! 

And, who can measure the catastrophe, and com- 
pass its full magnitude, when a nature, such as 
man's, folds the wing that might have soared to the 
highest heavens, and sinks like a mill-stone from an 
angel's hand, into eternal woe ! Well might the 
prophet -write — 

"Hell, from beneath, is moved to meet thee at 
thy coming ! It stirreth up the dead for thee. All 
they shall speak and say unto thee — Art thou also 
become as weak as we ? Art thou become like unto 
us? How art thou fallen, Lucifer, son of the 
morning !" 

And how admirable the adaptation of true relig- 
ion to meet the exigencies of human nature ! 

In all that is wonderful in man, we see only the 
adjustment of a harp of many strings to thrill with 
the most rapturous harmonies. 

The action of the powers of thought upon merely 
secular objects, is often attended with rich enjoy- 



MAX AND RELIGION. 



Ill 



ment. The logician, as lie forges link into link, in 
the chain of close consecutive reasoning ; the orator, 
as he pours his soul-stirring sentences upon the ears 
of listening multitudes ; the artist, as the bright con- 
ception flashes upon him, and he burns to transmit 
it to the canvass, or embody it in marble ; the poet, 
"his eye with fine frenzy rolling," as he enshrines 
his thoughts in enduring lines ; the philosopher, as 
he pursues the paths of investigation in the world 
of nature, all find in the excitement of thought 
itself, an intense enjoyment. 

But when the heavenly replaces the earthly, as 
an object of thought, and the finite mind, now in 
saving alliance with the infinite, pursues such themes 
as man's redemption, the legislation of heaven for 
human salvation, the processes by which a sin- 
smitten world is washed of its defilements, and its 
ruins built into a temple for the living Grod, in a 
word, any of all the grand themes of revelation, it has 
reached a terrace, where balmier airs fan the brow, 
sweeter music greets the ear, and brighter prospects 
gladden the eyes. And all the play of the moral 
nature, now in conscious harmony with that of God, 
brings with it its own peculiar reward. 

The memory, too, busied with recollections of 
gracious providences, and gracious exercises, by 
and through which the soul passed from death to 
life, and the various scenes of spiritual enjoyment 
through which it has been led, becomes a new 
treasure in its coffers. 



112 



ANTHR0P0S. 



The play of the affections, now divorced from the 
odious and sinful, and throwing their tendrils around 
that which is pure and enduring, mingles drops, new 
and sweet, in the cup quaffed by the soul. 

And this mind with all its powers, washed of all 
defilement, relieved of all weaknesses, and instinct 
with the vigour of the life above, how will it lash with 
its sanctified and glorified wing, the air of heaven, 
and sing and soar while eternity lasts ? 

If we turn from the wonderful to the fearful, in 
our nature, just as the rising sun floods the clouds 
in the horizon with hues more in number, than man 
can name, so does the religion of our Lord gild all 
these fearful things into felicities ! 

Take our capacities to suffer. They are no longer 
fearful. For these capacities simply make suffering 
possible, not necessary. But, at my Saviour's side 
above, what afflictive causes can ever reach me ? 

Even here, how sorrow's cup is robbed of its 
bitterness ! The period during which suffering is 
possible, is very limited. They are u but for a 
moment/' Who cannot suffer anything for "ar 
moment," when he knows that then the griefs not 
only come to a perpetual end, but usher the patient 
into everlasting bliss ? Through all our griefs this 
one commanding truth confronts us, that we are 
now engaged in bearing all the ills that will come 
upon us, for ever and ever ! 

Then, invaluable mitigations, in many forms, 
mingle sweets in the bitter cup. The Spirit of God 



MAX AND RELIGION. 



113 



dwelling in the soul, nerves up its powers to endure, 
and the effect is the same, whether the burden be 
diminished, or the strength increased. And we 
have ever at hand the "Rock of Ages,'' into whose 
clefts we may run, as a i: hiding-place from the 
wind, a covert from the tempest, rivers of water in 
a dry place, and the shadow of a great rock in a 
weary land." 

Sympathy of the loving in our struggles, makes 
them easier. "And in all our afflictions, HE is 
afflicted." 

"Fear thou not, for I am with thee. Be not 
dismayed, for I am thy God. I will strengthen 
thee, yea, I will help thee ; yea, I will uphold thee 
with the right hand of my righteousness.'' 

But better than all, these very sorrows, that by 
nature, are mill-stones to weigh us down, become 
wings wherewith we fly and rejoice ! " They work 
for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory." Sanctified sorrow is one of the most effective 
of purifiers. 

We see the legitimate effect of its ministrations 
in the case of Paul. He was a great sufferer. 
" Out of much affliction and anguish of lieart, I 
wrote unto you with many tears." Bunyan -and 
Baxter were great sufferers. It has been the rule, 
rather than the exception, that suffering and high 
sanctification have gone together. 

But instead of complaining, these men of God, 
"were exceeding joyful in all their tribulations." 
10 * 



114 



ANTHROPOS. 



Thus, our capacity to suffer, becomes the avenue 
of enjoyment. The possession of eyesight makes it 
possible to see sights that might harrow up the soul ; 
but, if they weep here a while, what visions await 
them at the right hand of God ? The ear might be 
the inlet of weepings and wailings, and gnashings of 
teeth, but in heaven they will only hear the roll and 
swell of celestial harmonies. ThuS, our very capa- 
city to suffer, making it possible to be exceedingly 
happy, calls loudly for songs of grateful joy. 

There, also, is our mortality. We must die. It 
is so appointed. The body and the soul must part. 
Earthly friends must be left behind. The anguish 
of the last hour must come. 

But religion puts us in a position to welcome 
death as our best friend. 

" I would not live alway : I ask not to stay, 
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way ; 
The few lurid mornings that dawn on us here, 
Are enough for life's woes, full enough for its cheer. 

"Who, who would Hve alway; away from his God; 
Away from yon heaven, that blissful abode, 
Where the rivers of pleasure flow o'er the bright plains, 
And the noon-tide of glory eternally reigns." 

To be freed from the law of death would be an 
eternal imprisonment in a world of ever-recurring, 
ever-varying sorrow. 

Hence, the hour of departure has ever been a 
welcome hour to God's clearest children. " Come,'' 
said one of the Janeways to the weeping friends 



* 



MAX *AXD RELIGION. 



115 



around his dying bed — " come, see a man happier 
dying than you ever saw one living." 

Pastor Rien, of Denmark, a little before his death, 
cried out,. "I see the angels coming on the clouds 
of heaven, they are coming to take me, they descend, 
they stoop down, they encircle my bed, they are 
come to guide me to their glorious abode !" 

Andrew Fuller, a half hour before his departure, 
opened his eyes, and with a smiling countenance, 
said : " Dying is sweet work, sweet work ! My 
Father ! my heavenly Father ! I am looking ujd, I 
am looking up to my dear Jesus, my God ! my por- 
tion ! my all in all ! Glory, glory ! Home, home !" 

Such transmutation does the King of Terrors 
undergo in the hands of true religion ! Let one, 
then, but read his " title clear to mansions in the 
skies," and this terrible element in our nature 
becomes clothed with glory, and the dying saint, 
without presumption, may say, 

" Come Death, shake hands ! I'll kiss thy bands ! 
'Tis happiness for me to die. 
What ! dost thou think that I will shrink ? 
Fll go to immortality \" 

And this immortality, so oppressive to the thought 
of one unprepared to die, becomes another of the 
choicest jewels in the Christian crown ! i 

" So shall we be ever with the Lord!" Anew 
and everlasting life poured through all the faculties 
of the soul, fear annihilated, memories so sifted as 
to minister only bliss, hopes and expectations fed 



116 



ANTHROPOg. 



with ever new revelations, ever new displays of 
divine wisdom, power and love ; what a life — what 
a prospect ! 

There the soul never tires. The rest remaining 
for the people of God, is not the condition of repose, 
but the condition that results from repose ; a condi- 
tion not of resting, but of restedness. It is always 
there, as if one had just awaked from a refreshing, 
re-invigorating slumber. Here, if the soldier ride 
twenty miles to carry an order, he needs rest. 
There, when the glorified one has borne a message 
from the king to the remotest bounds of the universe, 
he is just as fresh for a return, as when he first 
spread his wings. Here, if one essay a brief medi- 
tation on the glories of God, he soon wearies. 
There, the spirit mounts and soars with tireless 
delight. Could a Humboldt, or Newton, pursue 
his investigations for sixty years, fresh and elastic, 
each succeeding hour, as at the first, what treasures 
of knowledge would he accumulate? There, one 
shall go on for ages without wearying. 

Here, in the best condition, satiety will come. 
Power does not satisfy. Thomas Jefferson, at the 
end of his second presidential term, said : 

"No bondsman ever put off his chains half so 
willingly as I these robes of office." 

Riches cannot make happy. It was our lot once 
to walk with a friend through lawns of uncommon 
beauty, and to be pointed by him to a mansion in 
its midst, a prince might covet ; from whose doors 



MAX AXD RELIGION. 



117 



one bright morning the wealthy owner issued to find 
his way to a tree, upon those grounds, where he 
committed suicide, by hanging ! His burden was 
satiety. With all his possessions, he could find no 
means of feeding hungerings and thirstings which 
had become intolerable. 

Pleasure, too, digs her own " voluptuous tomb." 
Paris, the paradise of the mere pleasure-seeker, 
reports a larger annual number of suicides than any 
other city in the world. 

Nothing can satisfy an immortal mind, and per- 
manently postpone disgust and misery, but a bound- 
less affluence of appropriate food and an everlasting 
affluence of variety. 

Two prisoners were shut up in a cell together for 
years. The first year they entertained one another 
* with stories of their lives. The second year they 
spoke little, for all they could say was a mere 
iteration and re-iteration of what had been said 
before. The third year was spent in almost un- 
broken silence. They had exhausted all their 
thoughts, and shut up as they were from access of 
any new material for thought, they could do nothing 
but gloomily brood in silence, and in vacuity of 
mind. 

One shut up long in solitary confinement, at 
last having gazed ten thousand times upon every 
visible spot and angle in the Avails of his cell, having 
ten thousand times thought over every thought, 
having turned over the contents of his memory until 



118 



ANTHROPOS. 



all is worn threadbare, worried and wearied with 
the monotony of everlasting iteration, his jaded 
mind goes mad ! 

Hence, one of the necessary conditions of toler- 
able, not to say happy life, in an immortal being, is 
an exhaustless and endlessly varying supply of 
objects for the employment of the mental powers. 

This condition will be grandly met in the future 
life of the blessed in the boundlessness of the fields 
thrown open for exploration, and the exhaustless 
and ever-varying developments of divine wisdom. 

Perhaps this is the significance of that river that 
flows from the throne of God and the Lamb. What 
figure more rich in suggestion of exhaustless copious- 
ness and never-ending variety, than that of a perennial 
full-brimmed river. As we gaze, legions and legions 
of sparkling water-drops glide by, following and & 
followed by other legions of legions, on, on, for 
ever, and ever, and ever. 

Thus, into the ever-craving, never-cloyed mind in 
heaven, with never-ceasing flow, will come fresh 
materials for thought, study, and meditation, and 
as the soul looks and wonders, it will be quickened 
in its activities by exhilarating expectations of new 
and greater wonders yet to come. 

Could we but mount to Abraham's side, as he sits 
and meditates beneath some evergreen palm on the 
banks of the river of life, and question him as to his 
past and present, and anticipated future, what a 
story should we hear ! 



MAN AND RELIGION. 



119 



All his past would be one delicious and fragrant 
garden of flowers. From tjr, of the Chaldees, to 
the grave of Macpelah, how bright every event as 
viewed from the heavenward side ! In the darkest, 
cloudiest day on earth, the sun still shines in all its 
brightness ; and could we but mount above the 
clouds and look down upon them, our eyes would 
rest upon one wide sea of glory. So, the events in 
the believer's life, however dark and distressing the 
aspect from below, looked on from 'heaven's battle- 
ments, are bright with all the glory of divine wisdom 
and love. 

And from his entrance into heaven at death, to 
• the present moment, what a poem is the story of 
His experience ! 

And as to his present, he would say, " Every 
object my eye lights on, increases my joy. Every 
sound that reaches my ear, is a note from the har- 
monies that roll like a boundless ocean about me. 
Every breeze that kisses my brow, is like the breath 
of Jehovah." 

" But what about the future ? When a boy in 
your father's home among the Chaldees, you little 
dreamed of the tears your eyes were appointed to 
shed, of the distress and anguish that were to wring 
your spirit. Now, eternity is yet before you. May 
there not come in the course of its evolutions and 
developments, experiences still less anticipated, in- 
finitely less to be desired?" 

Perhaps he would reply — 



120 



ANTHROPOS. 



" Respecting the future, near and remote, we 
know nothing. Every hour brings us some new 
surprise. But, nestling in love of God, we experi- 
ence as little anticipation of ill, as when a babe, I 
lay on my mother's bosom. All we know of the 
future, and all we desire to know, is that the source 
of our joys is as .stable as the throne of the Re- 
deemer." 

Thus, religion, true religion brought from heaven 
on wings of incarnate love, beginning in the soul 
with faith, and repentance, and developing into 
loving devotion and fidelity, demonstrates its origin 
by its thorough and complete adaptedness to human 
nature. The author of this religion can be no other • 
than the creator of the soul. This religion is the 
glory and crown of our nature. It is the interpreter 
of its profoundest mysteries. It reveals the cause 
of our tears, and the cure of our woes. It opens 
spheres of activity here, in which we take part with 
the angels of God. It furnishes the most effective 
incentives to ennobling service. Interpreting, it 
transmutes our very sorrows into felicities, and gives 
a new flavour to all our joys. 

He who becomes possessor of this treasure will 
thank God for ever for his being, and that he was 
not made an angel, cherub, or seraph, but a man. 



THE END, 



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